Bad luck if you're superstitious

On the first of the month, I woke a little after midnight and without thinking chanted, ‘White Rabbits!’

The pot plants looked rather startled. I wasn’t exactly focusing with night vision mode but somehow I felt it.

But declaring ‘White Rabbits’ to the ceiling?

As if proving that I must harbour considerable mental deficiency, I recalled that through life I had chanted that good luck phrase on the first day of every month through toddlerhood, and

   ★ since school days on either side of the globe,

   ★ on every sailing voyage that coincided with a first of a month, even on my circumnavigation near notorious Cape Horn,

   ★ even in National Service training for Tricky Dicky’s devious war with Vietnam.

And why? Perhaps for a very similar reason that people begin and end their day with a prayer.

It’s what parents serve up to us long before we are able to reason. Tell a little child often that black is white, and he’ll never see it any other way. Continues on the blogs for my book Sailing to Purgatory, here ...

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