Magpies

Jo and I used to both be quite superstitious about magpies. There are lots of magpies near where we live; and we both knew the rhyme One for Sorrow, Two for Joy from our childhood.

I'd say pretty much every day, one or both of us would see some magpies and think they were an omen for the happenings of that day. The interesting thing though, is that we both saw what we wanted to see.

Jo had a habit of often being quite pessimistic: if she saw a magpie and then spotted another at a distance, then that would count as two separate magpies... so it would be one for sorrow twice; and she would expect to have a really bad day.

I, on the other hand, always allowed quite a large separation between individual magpies to count as a group. So any two magpies in the rough vicinity of one another were two for joy and a good day ahead. If I later saw a further lone magpie then that would add to the first couple and become three for a girl. Whereas Jo would see the loner as cancelling out the first pair and flipping her back to one for sorrow again.

Also, for me, anything more than one was considered good luck. So given the large number of magpies near us, I was almost always OK. Jo, sadly, favoured some of the more downbeat variations of the rhyme in which various higher numbers were also unlucky (for example nine for hell).

I remembered all this today when I saw a lone bird with its back to me this morning. I couldn't tell if it was a magpie or not. It was black from behind, and I couldn't see any coloured feathers. So I decided it probably wasn't a magpie... and I had a good day.