How Not To
Worry About It
 Normally I don't read horoscopes - too bland, too youth-oriented (ie 'new
man in your life on Friday'… 'your future career takes off') and anyway you can read
anything into them that you want and then start worrying about it. But when you see a newspaper report on a
politician who is dithering about going on a campaign tour because the dates are
inauspicious, the whole thing takes on a serious slant.
I'm talking about India, where I recently spent a couple of weeks on holiday. I read the report
about the politician in an English language Indian newspaper and idly turned to the
horoscopes to see how they write them up over there.
 This, as it turned out, was not a good idea. My horoscope firmly told me not to travel north on
the 26th of February. That was
the day we had booked to fly from Cochin to Madras in order to get our connection to the
UK, and whichever way you looked at it (northeast? east
then north?) we were definitely heading in the forbidden direction.
There's only one thing to do with information like this, unless you are an
Indian politician, and that is to forget it.
This is not too difficult to do - even
for natural-born worriers like me - when on
holiday, suspended from normality and distracted by novelty. But it all came back with a crash (oh
Freudian slip) when we arrived at Cochin airport to be told that our names had been left
off the computer and the one-flight-a-day was full.
A vague-sounding official said we
should hang around and maybe they'd find a couple of seats when everyone else had
checked in. My husband hovered by the
check-in, while I sloped off to a row of
uncomfortable seats to think up contingency plans.
 That was when I remembered the warning 'Don't travel north',
and immediately a curious peace descended on me.
Perhaps this was fate, the 'plane would crash without us on it. We would, of course, be horribly
inconvenienced by missing the flight, but that would be a small price to pay. On the
other hand, perhaps the warning simply referred to the computer mix-up and not the flight
itself…
Either way, I got an insight into the attraction of fatality: if it's
ordained, just don't worry about it. What will be will be.
We did get on the flight, which was
smooth and uneventful. I sat next to a nice Indian lady who discussed the
upkeep of saris (a lot of ironing apparently) and my husband complimented me on my
unusual calm.
I don't think I'll be using this approach to switch off future worries but I
would like to know other people's techniques, so get in touch: helen@laterlife.com.
Meanwhile,
no more horoscopes!
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Talkback is a regular
feature in laterlife.com run by journalist and author Helen Franks. 
