Two drains, three drains

(I am ashamed to admit I actually do this. I don't believe it, but years of conditioning has left me physically incapable of walking on particular parts of the pavement)

New 'I am not a mentalist answers'?

Are you some kind of superstitionalist? Is there some unspoken time/distance period attached to this i.e. 2 manhole covers on the same walk.

I walk over a manhole cover every day when I go to work. I see "Stanton Warriors" and think of Ronan.

There should be manholes in HMV.

warning! bad luck is incurred on mere sight of solitary two-tone bird.

to preserve self from horrific fortune, salute said magpie and say 'good morning, major' and all will be well.

if there is no one around i will always do it. if there *are* i will salute under the guise of scratching my head and will quietly say the mantra under my breath.

i also always bless myself at the sound of an ambulance under the guise of scratching head, chest and each individual shoulder very fast. and i never look at the back doors of a moving one.

is pessimism a form of superstition?

having watched as many soaps as I have, I know that to be cockily certain about anything and announce it confidently to the world means that in the next episode of the drarma of your life, the NEGATIVE AND OPPOSITE scenario of the presumption will almost certainly come true.

this is why i never tempt fate. will generally keep quiet about something i hope will come true. and will noisily voice my worst fears in the hope that saying them will stop them from happening.

if saying the best brings out the worst then maybe saying the worst will bring out the best

i am clearly a superstitious old fish-wife

But you've made me feel a lot better.

glad to be of service, lady

I'm British, and I've never heard this one. I don't have any superstitions. I am entirely rational. I say that more by way of confession than boasting...

You poor thing.

I too cannot walk over three drains/ manhole covers. Worse than that, I cannot stand for people I am with to walk over three. The technique for cancelling out the bad luck however is to spin around once, I've no idea where I got this from. A friend of mine is equally superstitious and he too cannot walk over three drains but he claims to cancel the badluck you have to spin around and spit on the ground.

hehe Let's all laugh at Anna.

What again?

I get superstitious actually if I laugh at people, I think they are going to hit me.

Graham - play nicely. Stop laughing at me and accusing Katie of being a lush. Get out of Rye and fight the evil demons away.

Is Anna being serious? I'm not.

(As emap.com has fallen off the internet, I've sent an email to your hotmail address)

Can someone please reassure me that the drain thing only applies to the square drain covers often found joined together, not the individual round ones? Otherwise my existence will become even more farcical than it already is. Though actually since I left university and stopped having the kind of traumas I believed were affected by drains, broken mirrors etc, I've been a lot less obsessive.

Graham - I was not being serious.

You cannot be serious - J.McEnroe at a tennis tourney in 1981.

Still Graham, be the anti-Belle and Sebastian though and get out of the country and into the office.

yeah, ive heard this one. its meant to be 3 square drains connected, and you meant to shout out "Toast" for good luck, otherwise its bad. And the magpie one's true as well.

I've not heard about the drain cover one, but I can't walk on the cracks in the pavement. This sometimes means I have to do a sort of Ministry of Silly Walks down the road. Thank heavens for tarmac on pavements these days.

Oh, and if a tractor or lorry laden with bales of straw passes you and you accidentally look at the back of it, you have to touch your collar until you see a dog.

I do the Magpie thing, if I see one I alway panic and look around frantically for another, if it's all alone I do the wee salute a la nickie. I like the little rhyme although it worries me when I see 3 or 4 coz I'm not sure what that brings, pregnancy?

Just be careful...in DC we have exploding manhole covers.

(Seriously, something in the Georgetown sewers has been blowing the covers out of the holes.)

I know someone whose Dad has to hold his collar if he sees an ambulance..... until he sees an animal with a clven hoof. I can't remember the last time I saw a horse.

I heard about this ambulance one too, but i was told that you gotta hoold ur collar until u see two white dogs and a black cat

What, right through the journey to hospital *and* the operation?

lol.
and with the magpies, its 3 for a funeral, 4 for a birth...

Really? I thought it was -

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a story never to be told.

Hence the confusion...

does anyone else have a weird symmetry thing where if they eg bump one arm into a doorway they have to bump the other one, then the 2nd one again and then the first one, and then the 2nd then the 1st twice, then the second twice and the 1st twice etc etc? like 1221 2112 2112 1221? or sometimes even 1221 2112 2112 1221 2112 1221 1221 2112 2112 1221 1221 2112 1221 2112 2112 1221? etc. i've even gone one stage further occasionally into the insanity of 256 bumps...

(obviously i don't do this when i properly hurt myself, i'm not the kind of mentalist who stands around kicking walls really hard. also i quite often do this deliberately; when i'm sitting thinking i'll start tapping on my legs in this pattern. i was doing this just now until i became aware that my officemate was staring at me and laughing.)

Gosh, me too. I thought I was a bit pattern-obsessed and Tourettey, so it's nice that other people do too. I have to crack my knuckles in numerical patterns too. And don't get me started on eating Smarties...