When Life Imitates Art

Is it possible to predict the future? A lot of us do it everyday. But you don't have to be clairvoyant to think that you might be hungry at some point during your four-hour train journey, or that you might need to pee at some point during the endless experience that is Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, (so go easy on the Pepsi, and relieve yourself before the onslaught.) These are logical projections based on the known facts, and as such, they make us quite adept at seeing into the future.

Then there's the other stuff, the creepier stuff, the stuff that you have to either write off as coincidence, or else shrug your shoulders and admit that You Don't Know.

My family and friends were very understanding when I admitted I was freaked out about the number 333 following me around everywhere. "But why?!" I protested. "This means something!"

I say "understanding" - in reality they must have thought I was mad. Until, of course, my 3rd girlfriend broke up with me on the 33rd day of our relationship, and the train that I took to meet her was numbered 0333. Did they think I was mad then, huh?!

Probably. But - it served as a great inspiration for Life on Earth Retold, a film I shot in 2011. I thought it would be nice to pepper the number 33 throughout the narrative, in a sort of Doctor Who / Bad Wolf kind of way, to give an arc to the labyrinthine plot. And I think it worked. It served its purpose. It gave my relatives something to talk about.

What I cannot reconcile, though, is how life has proceeded to imitate art following the film's DVD release. How does one come to terms with the fact that the film is about a clinically depressed Christian who decides to commit suicide, when my Christian friend committed suicide shortly after the film's release, and he was the minister of the church we filmed in? Or the fact that the scene where Sadie's mum dies of cancer was written on the same day that Lis Sladen died of cancer, whose daughter was called Sadie? Or the fact that one of the characters, Spike Ombre, has Marco Polo saved on his desktop - a missing TV serial which has since turned up, (probably.) Or the fact that the word Birchwood, which is also peppered throughout the film, is now the hometown of one of its cast members?

In the interests of sanity, it's probably best to apply the Coincidence label, which is what I did. I'm a devout Christian, and I'm not superstitious. Seriously.

But then I made the mistake of writing my first proper book, Lady Don't Fall Backwards! I must admit I was tempted to drift into the realms of superstition when I noticed that real people were dying all around me, (ironic for a book about a serial killer.) Blimey, I had to keep stopping to in order to grieve. In fact, there had been three fatalities by the time I'd finished. Yes, three. Three, three, three, (no, stop it!) Two people and a cat, to be precise.

Intriguingly, the two men who died were both born in 1948. And it's a very terrifying day when you realise that the book you're writing is also set in 1948, but a slightly better day when you realise that the same can't possibly apply to your cat, the resplendent Professor Tiggs, as he was born in August 2000! Phew.

That is, until you realise that he was exactly 12 when he died, and that 12 cat years is the equivalent of 64 human years, so he would have been born in, err... 1948!

Anyway, once the book was finished, I stopped killing people and life returned to normal. I even included my token 'Birchwood' reference for good luck, (it was a seamy back alley in Flushing, NY - Birchwood Avenue. Look it up in Chapter 18!) How coincidental, then, that the lady who arranged the book's publication lived on... Birchwood Road! Oh Lord.

Now, I know what you're thinking. BIRCHWOOD is at the heart of this isn't it!

So, let's translate BIRCHWOOD into a series of numbers corresponding to each letter's position in the alphabet! (Because that's the only way you get anything done these days.) B-I-R-C-H-W-O-O-D translates into 2-9-18-3-8-23-15-15-4. I'll scoot past the fact that this sequence contains the numbers 1-9-4-8 (sort of) and bring you to one heart-stopping, breath-taking conclusion... If you join the 2 and the 9, and then the 3 and the 8, and if you use the number 15 just once, do you know what you've got?

This Saturday's lottery numbers! You're welcome.