Snapshots: A Coincidence Diary

Circa 6:15 p.m. on April 12th 2007, I was composing an e mail to Bob Woffinden further to an e mail interchange. This e mail of mine, containing a link to a new verdict of assault against Charles Ingram for grabbing a 13 year old who had coughed spittle into his face - Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:32:04 +0100 (BST) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=CR1OBYN2RKO2TQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/11/ncough111.xml - generated the reply from Woffinden of - Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:54:17 +0000 James, You could try writing a letter to, say, the Daily Telegraph - on the grounds that this is exactly the sort of thing that the right-wing press usually rails against. So this nasty young kid gobs at/spreads his germs over Charles, makes up half of his evidence and the wonderful CPS says - you shall have the full protection of the English law! And we will prosecute this gobbed-on person who dares to tell the truth in court! Preposterous Woffinden was best known as a campaigner fo...

On March 13th 2007, having tried to teach our newly-acquired, Siamese cat, Shen , to use a litter tray, unsuccessfully, and me telling the wife that either it got housetrained or it went out of my house, she became tearful about it. Not long after my son and she watched a DVD of a film called DateMovie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_Movie which none of us had seen before. In one scene a guy goes to a lavatory and there is a Siamese cat sitting on it, who even ends by applying lavatory paper, flushing and lighting a match. Shen was to improve his habits and become a welcome member of the household.

V On the afternoon of March 4th 2007 I was in conversation with Grandmaster Dr Jonathan Mestel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mestel at a chess meet http://www.4ncl.co.uk/photos04-guildford.htm and mentioned a story I had heard about the 2nd game of the Short Vs Kasparov Times World Championship match in London in 1993. At move 25, Kasparov, playing black, had sacrificed rook for knight on the square c3. This is a well known and highly thematic sacrifice. It ruptured Short's pawn structure and generated sufficient counterchances for Kasparov to enable him to hold the balance. The game ended in a draw. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1070674 But the story had circulated, from more than one source, that a British Grandmaster who was commenting live on the game at the Savoy, and whom I had never known play either side of any game featuring the Sicilian Defence in his life, was taken aback by Kasparov ́s ... Rxc3 sacrifice since he had never seen the idea bef...

On the morning of December 30th 2006 I was glancing at stalls at a car boot fair near San Javier when I saw a book entitled Don't Sweat the Small Stuff with Your Family  by Dr Richard Carlson. The blurb on the cover described it as a bestseller. I had never heard of it before. About 20 minutes into the last day of the year I was reading from The Independent & The Independent on Sunday on line when I saw the obituary of Richard Carlson. It said that whilst flying from San Francisco to New York on a promotional tour for one of his self help books he had suffered a pulmonary embolism and died.  He was forty/six, as was I when I read his obituary.  http://www.dontsweat.com/

V This Guardian Blog thread caught my eye on December 18th 2006.  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/18/anopenletternotfromrichar   In it, Theo Hobson Theo Hobson - Wikipedia posts the kind of round-robin letter he postulates Richard Dawkins might choose to circulate this Yuletide to his ́fellow rationalists ́ as a, good natured, DIS incentive to Nativity Nonsense , huh? I chipped in with - Comment No. 342986 James Plaskett 18 Dec 2006 20:13 0 1 Find this thread a trifle o...

During a phone call of Dec 10th 2006, James Sorrie suggested that if I wished to appear at the www. quizzing.co.uk website incognito, then I might use a handle which he himself had sometimes deployed there, even months earlier. It was Mr.CC , and he also gave me the password. Both James and I had fallen out of favour, for separate reasons, with the administrators of the site, and they had banned each of us. At 11:30 the following morning I recorded the forwarded handle of MrCC and password on my drafts page of passwords and handles. A few mins later I read in The Times online a story involving aliases, one of which was "CC". It was something to which they had referred in a story of December 5th 2006. But this was the first I had heard of it. And, as I say, Sorrie, who "loaned" me the handle and password, had been using both months earlier, as may be verified by checking posts at quizzing.co.uk . (Incidentally, the password was kenneth . Sorrie and I agreed upon ho...

(230) Bebo's Number On September 15th 2006 I bumped into John Lucas in Shaftesbury Avenue whilst passing through London. I had mislaid the telephone number of a chess pupil, Bebo Kobo, and John, who worked for him in Camden Market, was one of perhaps only half a dozen people I knew who could have supplied me with it, as he did. Also (231) To speak freely about one ́s beliefs, or to "black more"? In the last days of October 2006 I altered the Wikipedia entry on Susan Blackmore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Blackmore  My codicil suggested that what she said and what she believed were not the same thing. A few days later I saw that it had been removed. So I added it again. An hour or so later it had gone. So I added it again. This cat and mouse continued for a while until her page achieved "protected" status.  I asked why and was informed by administrator, Andrew Norman, that what I had posted was potentially libellous. I challenged that. Blackmore has laid o...