Peter Dellingham of the Dull Men’s Club writes: On a road trip to London a few years ago, the Gerry Rafferty song “Baker Street” started playing on the car radio just as I turned in to the famous London thoroughfare, forever immortalised in the song. Does anybody else have any equally dull coincidences they would like to share?
So Gordon Ward posted: I was in the Lord Delamere Bar of the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi waiting for a mate to turn up. I was reading a Wilbur Smith book and as I turned the page, the hero walked into the Lord Delamere bar of the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi. Wilbur had described it exactly.
But this coincidence, shared by Richard Aug, will really blow your socks off:
I have a loud noise in my bedroom that starts everyday at the same time, just before I wake up.
It’s been a while since I ran across a poem I felt was just right for Owl Chatter. Today’s selection from The Writer’s Almanac is called “Old Age Home,” and it’s by Burt Kimmelman.
The ride from Manhattan — slipping her
into the passenger seat, swinging
in her legs, shutting the door — to the
suburbs of New Jersey, its trees and
freshly-painted houses, was as neat
as her empty apartment. We placed
some photos on her table, hung up
a few paintings on the walls, arranged
some of her sculptures here and there, plugged
in lamps and the television set.
We made our way along the hallway
to a room full of sun, where people
were gathered to talk a little, though
she had nothing to say. There was a
stereo playing music, and once
in a while someone sang the lyrics,
which had returned from some dim region —
a man seated in an easy chair
had wanted, years ago, “a girl just
like the girl who married dear old Dad.”
We went to dinner. Someone poured her
a glass of juice. She ate, spilling food,
with a sudden hunger. Afterward
we sat on some couches. Someone asked
her to dance. The music played. She danced
with slight, tentative steps, a tulip
too heavy for its stem. When we had
to go we kissed goodnight, and left her
to lie down in her soft bed, her head
on her pillow, to slip into sleep.
The puzzle today was a tribute to THE SPANISH STEPS in Rome. They spanned the grid as an answer as did TRINITA DEI MONTI, the church that sits at the top of the steps.
Things I learned from comments: There are 39 steps leading up to the church, representing the 39 lashes JC received before he was crucified. Also, John Keats lived his last days in a house that bordered the Spanish Steps, where he died at age 25. Too bad Keats wasn’t worked into the puzzle alongside the steps.
Salvador Dali was worked in instead. We had LIMP, “like the watches in Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory.’” And San “Salvador” showed up separately in a clue. (Coincidence?)
Hello Dali!
ciaolenora shared this tale of good fortune, which could fit into the coincidence material, above:
“I was helped immensely by a recent attempt to clear out my attic. I came across a very old scarf I’d purchased years ago in Italy on which was depicted several attractions, one of which was La Trinitá dei Monti. I googled La Trinità and learned it was situated above The Spanish Steps. A very lucky and timely find indeed.”
This comment, by JJK, made me happy:
“I’ve been to the Spanish Steps – my sister and I, both traveling in Europe with our boyfriends in 1980, planned to meet on the Spanish Steps on a certain day at a certain time. Since it was pre-cell phones and we had no way to be in touch, we just had to hope it would work out. It did, we met, it was summer in Rome, and we both eventually married those boyfriends.”
NORA was in the puzzle, not Nick: “Half of a Dashiell Hammett detective couple.” Did you know a type of cocktail glass is named after them? Nick and Nora cocktail glasses. They look like this. Cheers!
When “Unfilled space” turned out to be a six-letter word with CU in the center, it had to be vacuum, no? But it turned out to be LACUNA, a new word for me. It means blank space or missing part. It comes from lagoon or lake, in the sense of a pit or gap.
The Wise Men of Chelm will live forever in Jewish folklore. Their “wisdom” is carefully arrived at but is the wisdom of fools. Thus, when they arranged the trial of a fish that committed the crime of slapping a Chelmite’s face with its tail (the man was carrying the live fish under his coat), they found the fish guilty and sentenced it to death by drowning.
But this story, reported by CBS News, is from the actual town of Chelm in Poland. According to the Culture Ministry, workers removing tree branches near a historic cathedral in Chelm, came upon two children’s skeletons in a shallow burial pit where no gravesites are marked.
Neither skeleton was buried in a coffin and one of the children was buried with the characteristics of an anti-vampire burial. The head was separated from its body, and the skull was facing down into the ground arranged on a stone. This is consistent with ancient burial methods used to prevent a person thought to be a demonic entity from exiting the grave.
Makes perfect sense.
In 2022, Polish researchers found the remains of a woman at a gravesite in the village of Pień with a sickle around her neck and a triangular padlock on her foot. The padlock was supposed to prevent a deceased person thought to be a vampire from returning from the dead. The sickle was thought to cut the neck if the corpse tried to rise from the grave.
You can’t be too careful.
Research for this story was provided by Owl Chatter Special Correspondent for Demonic Affairs, Chava Abramowitz.
Love the smoky eyes, Chav.
See you tomorrow, everybody.
The Wellington Files 