Paraskavidekatriaphobia

If youre reading this soon after publication, welcome to Friday 13th. One comes around every few months and its the day where superstitious plonkers everywhere delight in telling us sensible folks that we all have to be very careful or a great misfortune will befall us. We all secretly know that this is a lot of superstitious claptrap but conversely we all secretly like to play along for a bit of fun.

Perhaps this particular superstition should be encouraged as if we can convince enough people that Friday 13th really is hazardous to your health then the superstitious amongst us will stay at home for the day imagine it would be really easy to get to work in the morning (The Church has fixed that for us though this week as its still Easter half term for some pupils so mummy doesnt have to take little Johnny and Rachel to school in the 4 x 4 and daddy has taken a week off work to spend quality time with both Mummy, Johnny and Rachel I bet theyre all about to kill each other after the 6 days theyve been stuck together!), no queues at the supermarket checkouts and most importantly no queues at the bar!

Assuming that you arent spending the day under the table or hiding in a cupboard my advice is to spend the day completely drunk if anything bad does happen you wont realise and certainly wont remember it just like every other Saturday morning youll wake up with a bad hangover nursing bruises you dont recall getting wondering to whom you need to send flowers or chocolates.

Paraskavidekatriaphobia, if you havent worked it out by now, is a morbid fear of Friday 13th. Ive been doing some extensive research on the subject (well 5 mins on the internet anyway) and have found lots of experts all pontificating different reasons for it – Christian beliefs, Viking myths, the lunar calendar, Knights Templar and the most likely reason of all total twaddle!

Its enough to give you Expertophobia (fear of experts) or Crapophobia (fear of superstitious rubbish) alright I made those two up – Or my favourite (real) one Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia fear of long words (but you couldnt read the word if you had the phobia so how would you ever know what it was called).

However you spend the day lets try and make it a positive one – do something nice to for someone you normally wouldnt help try and perform a random act of kindness if at all possible. There are many ways to do this of course

You could casually remind the baseball capped young gentleman to pick up the litter that he has just mistakenly dropped in the street

Ask the chap with the tattoos in the park to pick up the doggie poo that Fang the Rottweiler has just left behind for you to step in

Or how about giving one of the towns hard working traffic wardens a big hug and squeezing him tighter and tighter and tighter.

Follow my advice and Ill meet you all in the Hospital at the weekend mines the bed with vodka in the drip closest to the loo.

Cheers!

Headlander