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[ 4 minute read ]

Lucky

You thought you were lucky when you found a four-leaf clover, didn't you? You thought that you had to be young, care-free, and in love in a field of buttercups to be able to find a leaf that tells you that you are lucky. Just think about that for a second; I would say you are pretty lucky to be carefree and in love in a field.

Well, old people don't need to bend down or lie on buttercups to be able to find a lucky leaf. They can find an ash tree leaf instead. Well, actually it has to be a leaf with an even number of divisions on each side if it to be most valued. They are the rare ones.

Ash leaves and the tree they grow on, according to the 'Encyclopaedia of Superstitions' by E. & M.A. Radford, 'were formerly thought to be lucky, and were used in charms and divination'.

In the West Country, if you found an ash leaf with even divisions on each side it was usual to say:

'Even ash, I do thee pluck,

Hoping thus to meet good luck.

If no good luck I get from thee,

I shall wish thee on the tree.'

(Encyclopaediea of Superstitions, 1974)

Quite what the plucker is wishing back on the tree is a bit unclear. To wish the leaf onto the tree is surely to unpluck it, yet it may be a sulky curse, as in, 'You gave me no good luck so I wish no good luck on the tree.' A bit entitled isn't it? What right does a tree-vandal have to expect good luck? None today, I would say, but fifty something years ago and more, maybe quite a bit. After all, the only way you might get rich, for example, was by betting on which pig wins a race at the annual fair, or by winning 'the pools' in the 1950s - 1980s, which was predicting which football teams would draw with which other football team in a Saturday match. That was a time of silence across the UK when the TV announcers would read out the scores in the early evenings.

I can't help thinking that all superstitions belong in the medieval years, which is why I thought of pig-racing. 

If the finder of a special even divided leaf 'wore it in his hat or buttonhole, or carried it in his pocket he could expect success and happiness, or at least, safety from mishaps and the effects of ill-wishing, for some time to come.' (Encyclopaediea of Superstitions, 1974)

I wonder what we might make of someone wearing an ash leaf at work. I can see in my mind some leaves in a hat band, but pinned to a dress or jacket? I am not sure I would want to stand near to someone wearing an ash leaf; I mean you wouldn't get any work done, would you. If the ceiling fell down it wouldn't land on the people wearing leaves, it would land on you. One glance around the office or building site and you might be running to the woods because you are the only one without an even-sided ash leaf. Worse, if your nemesis was standing at the office entrance handing out even-sided ash leaves to everyone except you, you might need to invent a dentist appointment 'toute de suite'. Run for your life! Hopefully, you would hear something similar to this in the background as you run away:

     'Morgana! To my office now!'

     'Yes, what is it?'

     'Morgana, Your strange hats are one thing, but when you turn up for work with bags under your eyes I know you are not going to be much use to us today. Take the day off. And take those silly leaves from around your neck; you look ridiculous.'

Next day:

     'Has anyone seen Morgana?'

     'She fell down the stairs as she left early, yesterday morning.'

     'I think I saw her slip in the street and bang her elbow.'

     'I saw her crying at the bus-stop because she had lost her bus-money at the bookies.'

Nobody wants that, do they?

I think back in the 1960s and 1970s losing your evenly divided ash leaf would be like losing your phone today; you would be constantly checking to make sure you have it, because you don't know if everyone else has one in their pocket, or even a four-leaf cover leaf. 

By the watercooler:

     'Got any leaves, Jim?'

     'No, but I've got guns, drugs and fighting bears.'

     'Nah, I need a leaf, man'

     'I have a dead cert at Sandown in the 3:30, will that do?'

     'No good without a leaf, is it?'

Back in medieval times, there were no dating apps and sites and speed dating meant walking ten miles through mud to the market and arriving wet and bedraggled. No matter, a girl in Northumberland back then could find a husband if she put an even-divided ash leaf in her left shoe after casting this spell:

     'Even, even, ash,

     I pluck thee off the tree,

     The first young man that I do meet,

     My lover he shall be.'

The first man she then met would be certain to marry her, no matter how improbable this might be. That is putting a lot of faith in love isn't it? No matter how the man looked or how poor he was, he was the right one for her. Of course, ever other man had to be temporarily in the pub drunk at these times to make sure they were out of the way and magic could place the right man in the right place. So, is he sober because he doesn't drink or because he is poor?

Leaves, they can be really tricky to deal with. Don't take your shoes off near an ash tree and check the inside of your shoes if you do.

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Confidence

At some point we are all asked to give feedback to at least one person. Many of us lie to our most intimate persons. ‘We ask OURSELVES what does this person want me to tell them? ‘You are a great singer, Ingrid, you should go on Britain’s Got Talent!’ Of, course Britain’s Got Talent is very well produced, so we really have no idea whether Ingrid really can sing, or if she has been set up by her malevolent family team. Yet, what if Ingrid lives at home with her parents and she is tone deaf and just will not shut up.

       ‘Shut up, Ingrid!’

       ‘But I love singing, and Vicki says I am really good.’

Her parents looked at each other, popcorn en-route to their mouths, and eyes rapidly returning to the dance troupe on the telly.

      ‘What she needs is a shock to set her straight.’

      ‘Yeah, let’s apply for Britain’s Got Talent on her behalf.’

It could happen. If Ingrid trusts her friend Vicki, who let’s face it, is not so pretty as Ingrid and works well as a wing-woman when they are out on the pull (you know, as a less attractive foil); then Ingrid is the leader of their team, while Vicki is always trying to keep up with the standards of someone she is convinced is superior to her, merely by dint of Ingrid’s looks getting more attention from intoxicated boys on Friday nights than Vicki normally gets.

Some years ago, I was very fortunate to be a secret player in an impromptu game I suddenly sprung on a young woman, Donna, the one who got the most attention from boys, and her friend Carla. Our first meeting was brief and we only swapped names; and, yes, I spoke to Donna before I addressed Carla that time. However, I knew we would meet again another weekend. ‘Carla’, I thought, ‘Remember her name! Carla.’

A couple of weeks later, Donna was more than a little bewildered the next time we met, when I spoke to Carla first.

      ‘Hello, Carla’

      ‘You remember my name!’ Eyes wide, bless her.

       ‘Of course. Who’s this?’ I already knew.

       ‘I’m Donna……!’

I interrupted her.

      ‘So, Carla, what you been up to? Do you wanna a drink?’

Such fun. Carla really was good to be with that night. I thought she would be. Unfortunately, she was in a team in which she was never the leader and her candle was always burning with a guttering flame. Her position, I am sure, is what she, not consciously, felt she deserved; to be eternally in second-place. I think she might have had some control, though, in not letting another good looking friend also join her and Donna's team.

A couple of years before I met Carla and Donna, I was already interested in magic; the type of magic that makes someone yawn when someone else yawns. I had also seen a teenage girl transform from an evergreen ivy to a beautiful lily because she felt loved; her love, she suddenly realised, was requited. Oh, how she tried to be kind while she struggled with her secret desires, and how vulnerable she felt until he one day said, ‘I really like you’. That is the type of magic I like. So, I was delighted to throw some magic at Carla, years later. She didn’t know it, but I was on her team and the leader of her new team, working behind the scenes with nobody recognising me or my efforts; but this was only for one night. Very much a Cinderella event. I hope Carla woke up the next day feeling at least a little bit special. If she did, she would, I suspect, have got a lot more deserved attention from then onwards.

What shape would you like feedback from your peers to take? We know that words with letters that have a hard sound to them serve to cause our minds to consider the thing associated with the sound of the word to have a similar shape. The sound of a ‘k’ for example is hard and jagged. It is, I am convinced, why we ‘see’ a sharp angle when we hear the word, ‘kink’. We also know, that the order that single words are used to describe a person changes our perception of that person.

Word Order

‘Interrogative, pedantic, diligent, focused, intelligent, inquisitive, open’

is a different person to:

‘Open, inquisitive, intelligent, focused, diligent, pedantic, interrogative’.

Yet the word order is the only thing that has changed.

Let us imagine these two characters in a story. Both are book-keepers. Plainly, the first is crotchety, irascible, and terse. The second, is polite, a good listener, and reliable. Given a task to impress a new manager who would get the team-leader role? And, who would find it hardest to recover from a problem that is ultimately revealed to the boss? I can hear the sneaky first person. closeted in a corner, quietly grumbling about the second one. ‘Oh, get a life’, I say, ‘You are grumbling about yourself. YOU have chosen which personal attribute you promote above another.’ 

If you discovered each of these attributes one by one over the course of a few chapters in a book, or scenes in a film, I think you might think these are two very different people.

In feedback to team members, then, we might look to a martial art style, from Chinese philosophy. Something like: Retreat, Strike, Defend, or Yin, Yang, Yin, which could be considered to be soft, hard, soft, though that is not the proper translation for Yin and Yang. In the Western world, we think of this as sandwiching a hard criticism between compliments. 

In returning to the earlier order of words to describe someone, which go from hard to soft for one person and soft to hard for the second person; and we change those words into insults and actual physical violence, and if we consider the hardest word to be an actual physical blow on a work colleague, it would be difficult to keep your job if you started with this action, but your point is painfully made. However, if the second person, in our scenario, is building towards this physical blow, the recipient may get the message of warning long before they are punched; both the work colleagues then get to keep their jobs.