A Plea to Fate

I’m going on holiday next week, acutely aware that the odds of dying increase exponentially the farther you venture from your own fart-stained sofa (despite what all of those ads from the 80s told you, which featured old grannies being immolated by their plug sockets and big, fat guys with beards being cooked alive in chip-pan fires).

 

So this is my plea to fate, in which I don’t believe. Really, this is just a pointless ritual to make me feel better.

1) Air Disasters

None of that, please. I’ve been keeping an eye on recent news reports featuring crashes – thanks to @bigmarkdavies for his research assistance – and found evidence of at least 5 major incidents in the last fortnight. That should be plenty. You’ve had your fill, Fate. OK, the victims mostly have been Asian, but you don’t have diversity targets to hit. It’s all about the numbers, baby. Leave me out of it. By my reckoning, travelling after 5 crashes I should be virtually indestructible. Hence I’m going to remove my seat-belt mid-flight, send people texts from 20,000ft and run from side to side in an attempt to tip the plane.

2) Terrorism

I checked out the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website, and read up on Turkey. The PKK, a Kurdish separatist group, announced in March that they plan to unleash a wave of terrorist atrocities on various parts of Turkey, including resorts popular with foreign tourists. Not a bad plan, chaps, and I’m not questioning the effectiveness of your terrifying campaign, but at least wait until the English school holidays. You’ll only get one shot at this, and you’ll want to ensure a large, broad selection of targets. And nobody would really give a shit if I died, so I’m a poor choice of victim. Plus, do you really want to take the chance that John Smeaton’s on vacation in Turkey? He’d fuck your entire organisation into the ground with one swift banjo. That man makes Bruce Willis look like Willis from Diff’rent Strokes. Thank you.

3) Highly contagious disease

Hello, pathogen. Skip me, please. I don’t really go out that much, so your chances of bringing down the species by infecting me with a highly contagious, incurable disease are slim. Plus, Swine Flu already came to Falkirk, and we kicked its porcine ass. Did you kill a single person, Swine Flu? No. All you did was give publicist Max Clifford work, and allowed a young Falkirk couple to cash in on their ‘We were infected on our Mexican honeymoon’ fame so they could get a new conservatory. You failed. Spanish Flu pissed itself laughing when it heard. And Bird Flu thought to itself, ‘At least I fucked over a few swans, and made some farmers shoot themselves.’ Here’s an idea, Fate: send giraffe flu to Swansea instead.