This week, I'm staying away from knives.
Why? My best mate, who I've been connected to since we met on the school bus at 11 years old and found commonality due to hairy legs and surfing Dads, sent me a rather gory picture of her hand with eight spidery stiches last night.
Turns out, she was cutting pumpkin with knives she did not know had been sharpened. Blood pissed out like her hand was a tap.
A pumpkin I grew.
Why would I be staying away from knives? Because, like our first serious boyfriends were named Geoff Alan with a G, and our husbands are both called Jamie, we have a tendency to sync up. The last time she injured herself, she fell off her board, her thigh colliding violently with the fibreglassed foam, resulting in a rather large purple bruise. Ouch, I'd said, and three days later did the same bloody thing. Three years later, we both still have these lumps that will not quit.
So yeah, I'll stay away from knives for at least a week.
She argues very much for some higher forces at work that unite us through injury, wearing the same coloured hair ribbons to school, and having relationships that have people named identically.
I'm not sure about it - I don't always think co-incidence has a higher force, though I admit both having soul mates called Jamie that we met within six months of each other is pretty bloody X-files do-do-do-do.
Teen girls only have a certain amount of coloured ribbons.
And in a season of good surf where we were both out there almost daily, perhaps a surfing injury on the same leg was a sure bet.
But then there was my Dad's funeral. We'd talked about what we were wearing the day before. She'd gone charity shopping and bought a pretty black lacey top. I had a green dress I'd planned to wear.
On the day, I decided to wear a silky orange Indian embroidered top. She rocks up and she's wearning - orange? What the actual, sister.
It's got to the point we are no longer that suprised anymore.
So yeah, I'm staying away from knives this week, even though in fifty years of cutting pumpkin, it's probably
With Love,