Via bowblog, a Will Self anecdote from The Independent. Steve Borwick says: 'The good thing about the paper's otherwise-annoying paid-for service is that the free taster is just long enough to include the punchline of a very good coincidence gag'. Here it is:
In this space last week, I recalled a drive through the Australian outback - from Alice Springs to Ayer's Rock - during which I managed to miss the only turn for 500 kilometres due to marijuana intoxication. The same journey was notable also for the most extreme coincidence involving children's literature. We were bombing along, the desert on either side of the thin, tarmac strip, dimming from ochre, to magenta, to purple; my wife was reading our then two-year-old son a jolly little book that had the hook line: "Children, children what do you see?" Whereupon the lector turned the page to reveal a creature, then chanted - hopefully accompanied by the compliant kiddie - "I see a green turtle looking at me!"
She had just got to the point where the chant was "I see a red bird looking at me!" when a large red bird flew into the windscreen, leaving a smear of blood, a few wing feathers and a large crack. Shocked as much by the synchronicity as the near-fatal SVR ("Single Vehicle Rollover" as this most common accident is termed in Australia) I pulled over and panted atop the wheel for a few minutes. "If you think that was a lucky escape," my wife said after a while, "on the next page there's a blue horse."
