For as long as we’ve been married, Mr Z has started the day the same way. He says: “Do you want to know what’s in your future?” and I say: “No, I’m done with your bullshit,” and he goes ahead and reads me Mystic Meg anyway. I’m never completely listening, so I lose track of which of us will find love in a red car and which can look forward to choppy waters in the workplace calming as the moon comes into our professional zone. It bugs me because obviously I don’t believe in horoscopes, yet at the same time I am disappointed whenever they don’t come true. Also I can never remember exactly what I have been waiting for – only that it hasn’t happened for me.
Then, a month ago, Mystic Meg died. Genuinely sad news, because even while knowing almost nothing about her, I had decided that she was probably nice. She kept racehorses and gave them names such as Astroangel and Astrodonna. I admired her total commitment to the world of the unknowable outcome. It is a paradox of the vocation that when you devote your life to predicting the future and are never once held accountable when your certainties fail to materialise, it gives you quite a pleasant que sera, sera attitude. Just look at a picture of Russell Grant, if you want to see the face of a man to whom luck has been a lady.
