Famous last words

I often ask myself if I have a certain kind of telepathy or a skewed psychic ability - one that means I see into the future except I see the opposite to what's about to happen. I frequently make confident assertions about something only to discover within a matter of hours that the forces of the universe have decided "au contraire"!

Allow me to give you an example. I was telling someone yesterday about how being in Sri Lanka had given me a different perspective and I felt far less of a need to keep up with friends in a materialistic sense. I gave my car as an example. I said that people kept telling me to get rid of it as it was falling apart. And yes, it's had to go car hospital a few times this year and it does have a bullet hole in its side.

"But" I (as I do) confidently asserted to the guy I was talking to "it goes and I have a feeling it will keep going for a long time yet and until it is unable to be resuscitated, I am hanging onto it".

This was 2pm yesterday. 8.30am today, driving down the hill to get to work in Paisley and I realise the brakes feel a bit soft. So I test them. And they fail. Completely. Didn't even slow it down a bit. It is the weirdest feeling driving downhill knowing that soon you'll be at a junction and getting no response whatsoever from your brakes. In the end I had to use the gears and the handbrake.

These positive thinking gurus tell you if you believe something will happen then it will. Hmmmm, perhaps I just have funny DNA. I better go and tell Tartan Hero he's not going to have my car for conference!