THE LUCKY PENNY LOG OF JILLY JARGON

Saturday 7 August 2004

Mandy and Rik got married, or at least had yesterday’s civil marriage blessed in church, at Willingdon, near Eastbourne. Hot sunshine all day long framed a lovely wedding and a great reception at a very pretty and old church hall, decorated throughout in pink and white. Very tasty and upmarket finger food was served by waiters all afternoon. We arrived in time and left at 7.30ish, getting home to feed Judy-dog and finish packing for our holiday tomorrow. Steph, our Joseph’s girlfriend, was a very beautiful bridesmaid. Mandy and Rik were a very happy couple. Perhaps they were ‘lucky with the weather’. We had a super day. But – any luck involved for us here? I don’t think so!

Sunday 8 August 2004

We left home on time to take Judy to Sittingbourne and for us to catch the ferry at Dover. The road at Hawkhurst was closed, however, so we had to take a detour. No problem. Dropped Judy off and arrived at the port on time. Ferry was late due to engine failure. Fast crossing. Good drive from Boulogne. Took wrong turning only once, at Amboise. Arrived at Mouzay to find parents in a terrible muddle, father in a lot of pain from a bad back – mowing a large expanse of grass with a heavy mower when you’re 84 is not always a good idea – and the interior of the holiday cottage covered in plaster dust. It began raining as we drove down through France. During dinner there was a violent thunder storm. Torrential rain continued through the night. Luck? Not particularly.

Monday 9 August

This was a grey day. The sky was grey and it rained all day. We were grey by the evening, having spent all day cleaning the cottage (every piece of china, every knife and fork, every surface, every curtain, every loo roll, every tile …) and shopping at LeClerc in Loches for provisions. Luck? Is weather luck related? Was it bad luck that the builder finished off some plaster work after the cottage was furnished? Where does planning stop and luck start?

Tuesday 10 August

Most of the day spent finishing the cottage cleaning and then turning our attentions to the very muddly and grubby main house. Cottage now looks lovely. House is better, too. Family friends Nicolle and Francis arrived from the north of France in their motor home. We entertained them in the cottage. Good supper and a lovely evening catching up on news. Luck? Was it luck that we were here when Nicolle and Francis visited? I suppose so – particularly for mum and dad as otherwise place would have been a mess and they would have been exhausted! For me? Well, it was good to see them. Maybe a glimmer of good luck here.

Wednesday 11 August

A glimpse of sunshine. A less hassled day despite a few family squabbles and Roger’s bad back acquired while scrubbing cottage floors. Did a bit more work on cottage. The rain returned with Stéphanie and her parents Jacques and Odile. We had tea in the cottage – but had a long wait for the food as Mum and Nick disappeared into Loches and took three hours to do a simple bit of shopping. Lots of cakes had been baked and were exchanged. Lovely to see the Prévosts. As soon as they had left, unexpected visitors arrived in the shape of builder Michel and his wife Pascale and son Julien. We discussed the cottage and many other things. Good evening. Luck involved? Not really. Prévosts’ visit was by invitation; Michel knew I would be in Mouzay and so had planned to visit me.

Thursday 12 August

We moved all our things out of the cottage and into the main house. Last minute preparations made in the cottage for the paying visitors who would arrive tomorrow. It rained for most of the day but cleared up in time for Le Marché Nocturne in Loches. We went fairly early and had something simple to eat in the old part of town – merguez sausages with frites and a nice pastry thing for pud. Met Andrea and Alain but they didn’t manage to get a table near us. Bought some red Moroccan slippers for Roger. Dad’s back a little better but he still needed his stick. Roger’s back a little better. Luck? Where?

Friday 13 August

An auspicious date for a lucky penny! We went out for the day. Drove to Chinon, stopped on the way to buy special honey. Had a nice lunch in Chinon, looked around the town, visited the chateau. Weather quite warm and sunny. Went to a ‘cave’ on the way back – we chose from two close together featuring the same surname and picked the one owned by the elderly father. Mother took us to the tasting room and we tried their 2001, 2002 and 2003. Bought some of the first and last. Also a painted magnum. Had dinner in restaurant of Tour d’Antoine overlooking Loches square. Yummy. A good day, but a lucky one? An interesting week, but a lucky one? This particular week I actually felt more cursed than blessed, more exhausted by my holiday than rested. Sorry. But on a positive note – penny or no I am ‘lucky’ to be the wife of a wonderful person, the mother of a great chap who has a fabulous girlfriend, the friend of so many lovely people and to have somewhere comfortable to live, plenty to eat and to have a grand life.

It’s My Lucky Day

I have always been ambivalent about the idea of “luck.” Like Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, I find the well-meaning phrase, “good luck!” delivered before an endeavour has begun to be depressing. On the other hand, whenever a little piece of luck comes and enters my day, I find it uplifting. Especially now. Furthermore, I have always possessed a healthy dose of superstition and have engaged in many luck-bringing rituals, including picking up my own share of lucky pennies.

I am definitely someone who experiences luck on a regular basis. I often forget that of course, and have wasted much time bemoaning my lot in life but instinctively, I do know that I have been lucky. Since I received the lucky penny, I have been pondering the role that luck has played and I realize that there has been a heck of a lot of it in the past six weeks. In fact, I am a wee bit hesitant to let the trusty penny go for fear that my good fortune will go with it. I carry it with me most days – including to a job interview today – and have got used to digging into my bag and giving it a little rattle in its plastic case. However, I think that what its arrival has done, is to allow me to recognize, acknowledge and appreciate the luck that comes my way on a daily basis.

Since a good friend passed along the penny to me, what I have noticed most about my luck is that it is associated with the people in my life. I was sick for quite a long time before I was lucky enough to receive treatment in one of the best facilities in North America. When I returned home, a little over three months later, friends, family and former colleagues gave me, and continue to give me, support, encouragement and love. I am lucky enough to have the most amazing health care professionals whom I see weekly and I am fortunate to have former supervisors who will give me good references for future jobs. I am also fortunate to live in a small, caring community but I am also lucky to have loved ones who care about me, scattered all over the world. And, I am truly blessed to have an understanding and compassionate husband who is still willing to share love and laughter with me.

However, what is most striking to me, what is most profound, is that quite simply, I am lucky to be here, right now. I know that that sounds SO clichéd – which is not what I want at all; I want to sound unique and original, of course. But…. there is no other way to describe how I feel since I have been home. Everyday, I embrace moments where I feel, truly feel in my heart, my good fortune and I try to honour those moments. I think that in the past, I have been as much afraid of good luck as I have been of bad. Somewhere along the line I let myself believe that I did not deserve good luck and if I did get it, it wouldn’t be around for long. I cannot measure luck but I do know that in any given day - even in any given hour - there are usually more lucky moments for me than there are not: from finding a parking meter with time on it, to getting a wonderful e-mail from a friend; from discovering a forgotten family photo in an old box of junk which I was just about to throw out, to getting a surprise gift from a nearly forgotten friend; from missing a sudden downpour the day I didn’t take my umbrella, to finding a shiny lucky penny in the street¼.. Luck, like something else that begins with the letter, “L,” is all around us.

Suna Houghton Mooney
Charlottetown, PEI
August 2004

I saw this little article in the Sports section of today’s Guardian, and was delighted that even top footballers are concerned about lucky mascots and rituals.

‘Shaun Wright-Phillips will remember this week for a long time, having made a goalscoring debut for England on Wednesday, but things could have been oh so different. When he joined the England squad after last weekend’s league fixtures, the winger packed two pairs of boots. But as the game approached he realised that he’d left his lucky pair at home. Distressed, he phoned Manchester City, and they couriered them straight to the north-east. The rest is history.’

(written by Duncan MacKay, page 15 of the Sport section)

Lucky Day 1

I managed to get my hands on some really cool tunes today including some Rick James singing with Eddie Murphy. I was very sad when I found out Rick James had died on Friday, I felt my heart sink when I found out. So when I managed to find a song I’d never heard before by him, I was very happy indeed.

Lucky Day 2

Day 2 wasn’t very lucky at all I’m afraid – I started to think maybe I’d got the freak unlucky penny. Until the end of the day that is when I got to watch Spiderman 2… Felt sorry for Poor “Doc Oc” but it had a happy ending for Spidey at least. It was a pirate so there was the added bonus of watching people as they stood up in the cinema to go to the loo.

Lucky day 3

I got a lovely Sean John Jumper for the bargain price of £3.50. Real wool and very nice - that should keep me nice and snug when the winter time comes. Also got a lovely red top with fruit sequins on it so very pleased with this too…

Lucky Day 4

Oh dear I started to think I may have got the rogue unlucky penny as day 4 was a bit of a wash-out luck wise. But it is day four and they do say the no. 4 is an unlucky number (it is in Japan anyway).

Just one example of my rotten luck on day 4 is that I visited a gallery I’ve been looking forward to going to for a while – stupidly not checking dates. When I got there I found that it was closed till September.

I also dropped my penny on the floor and it came out of its plastic protective cover – maybe this was the thing sealing the luck in! Anyway I popped it back straight away – maybe the penny wants to escape from me as my lucky days with it are over. We’ll see what happens on Day 5…

Lucky Day 5

I did get to work on my new artwork for all of today which was lucky for me.
Oh yes and I got to watch Cat Woman too… It was a massive cheese fest but if you like that sort of thing its OK. They tried to make an action movie for girls by basing the story line around beauty products. But I reckon the boys would probably enjoy it more because of Halle Berry’s body. Which got a massive round of applause when the camera pans slowly over it when she first puts the Catwoman suit on. The suit, by the way, is horrible – Julie Newmar’s style in Batman the TV show was much cuter – with the big bushy cat’s eyebrows and everything.

Lucky Day 6

I went out to Camden today and remembered why I never ever go there as its always horribly crowded. The good thing is that you get to watch the Goths in their natural environment.

I went off with my boyfriend to a little second hand place to get him some jeans. He was lucky enough to get a free hat with his jeans! He didn’t have many hats to choose from so it wasn’t a very nice hat – but free is always good and lucky.

Later on we went out to our friend’s birthday party and had a boogie to some top tunes… They played requests we’d made earlier in the week (I asked for Mary Jane Girls). So we all got to dance to our favourite tunes – Super lucky!

Lucky Day 7

I thought I’d lost the penny today but eventually found it in the lining of my trousers. Filled out an application form for a really good sounding artists internship which is paid and lasts a full year. Hopefully the lucky penny will give me some extra luck in getting it.

Lucky World is an exhibition at Q-Gallery in Derby. The ‘Relay’ exhibition opens with a private view on Tuesday August 10th from 6-8pm. There are lots of events taking place around the exhibition, so there will be lots to see and do. The exhibition runs until September 25, so get yourself to Derby and have a look! Click here to find out more.

I won a competition in Time Out magazine-how lucky is that?! Two tickets to the Big Chill, a tent, two sleeping bags, two floor mats, a torch…oh, and a loo roll! Edward and I went last weekend and it was fantastic. The best bits were Mr Scruff (as always), Quantic Soul Orchestra (who did a cover of a Mr Scruff tune, lovely), Flipside, The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain and Senor Coconut. It was just so delicious to be in such a beautiful setting on one of the hottest weekends of the year, listening to great music. It was amazing how many people we bumped into as well…

We now have the camping bug, and are going away again this weekend!

/****************** Monday 5th July ****************/

Having spent the previous night at Steven & Gaelle’s, we had to return to Cardiff. As luck would have it, I imagined that our train was thirty minutes earlier than it actually was, so we had time for coffee before we left Manchester. The journey down to Cardiff was so uneventful and punctual that I suspect this was in fact the good luck kicking in.

/****************** Tues 6th July ****************/

The telephone rang early this morning and Jackie was asked if she would accept a commission from a curator at the museum. She was asked to produce some copies of paintings on silk. This work will be so welcome, well the money will be, I suspect the actual work will be less so.

There is a public launch event tomorrow evening for a new Web Site at work and I am writing the web application that will drive the site and usually this takes a couple of weeks. I received the material I need to start work on the application last Thursday afternoon. This left, after some days off, one day and one hour to complete the application. Normally this would have been impossible, but guess what? I managed to get it finished just in time this evening and so I will still have my day off tomorrow. I am definitely feeling very lucky now.

/****************** Wed 7th July ****************/

Started the day with a couple of appointments at the doctor’s this morning. Something had been worrying me for a few months and wasn’t going away on its own. I then felt very lucky to find out that it wasn’t anything serious at all.

Went to Kitchens in Cardiff to get some more espresso pods for the machine. Couldn’t find any on the shelves in the usual place so went to ask the shop assistant if they had been moved. The shop assistant explained that they had decided to stop stocking them but decided to check with a colleague. The colleague had just been packing the remaining pods into boxes to send off somewhere and was just about to seal the box when we arrived ‘in the nick of time’ to buy the pods.
Went to the cinema (because I was having a day-off) to see what was on and found out there was a screening of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ on in the afternoon so went to see that.

After watching ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′, we watched ‘The Cooler’ (all about luck), and as it was getting late, and the weather much worse, we ran to Queen Street station to get the train home. There are not so many trains at that time of night so I think we were so lucky to see one pull in. We ran up the stairs to the platform and managed to jump on board just before the doors closed. We were lucky to get a train at all that night. The weather had got much worse and a crane had been blown over on the line a few hundred metres after the junction where our train turns off from that line.

/****************** Thursday 8th July ****************/

Went to Bristol today to go into the shed. Feeling very lucky at this point in the week and so I was delighted to find that my first train was early and my second train was a previous train that was late so I managed to get to work early whilst leaving at the same time. Feeling lucky (I didn’t ask myself if I felt that way) I decided that today was the day to send some emails I had been putting off for a while. There was no fallout, so I guess the lucky penny worked again.

/****************** Friday 9th July ****************/

Had some ’spare’ time today and decided to have another go at finding a bug in a search engine that I wrote about nine months ago. The bug has been eluding me for about six months. I had the lucky penny although that wasn’t the reason I decided to go looking for the bug. After staring at the screen for what seemed like hours , I finally noticed my stupid mistake from months earlier. I can’t decide if it was the lucky penny or just persistence. Not having anything else happen today that I could in any way describe as lucky I decided to mention it. Anyhow, I was pretty pleased to fix the problem.

/****************** Sat 10th July ****************/

Jackie has been waiting to get a space for her final show and at last she has one confirmed. The only problem being that the room is full of tables and chair that are arranged so they just touch the ceiling. These need to be moved to a new home today so down to UWIC for a fun day shifting furniture. Rather dismayed to find behind the stacked tables are some heavy, metal lockers and some bastards had left their stuff in some of the lockers. Having managed to walk a locker a few feet we were very lucky to find a tea trolley. Loading lockers onto the tea trolley felt really nice and they glided around the corridors like floating coffins.

Having moved the furniture, we went for a drink down at the bar we normally go to in the bay (haven’t got a clue what it is called) and decided to start sketching out an idea for a kitchen ‘thing’. Anyway, Jackie liked it and so luckily we avoided having an expensive, or cheap even, fitted kitchen. A very lucky escape there!

We had agreed to meet some friends this evening at Chapter and whilst trying to find somewhere to park, drove alongside Neil and Roger, in their car. I haven’t seen Neil or Roger for quite a long time so was very happy to bump into them tonight. Roger was composing the music for Earthfall’s latest show at Chapter the following week and had popped in to drop something off and stayed for a drink. I think it was so lucky to meet them this evening.

/****************** Sun 11th July ****************/

Spent the entire day in bed with a stack of DVDs and food and drink. How lucky am I?

and on Monday…
Packed up the coin to send onto next person and the Internet connection died until the afternoon of the following day. I am missing my coin already.