Thursday 25 June 2020

SEVEN SPADES...



Here's a curious-but-true tale.  First, though, you may remember me telling you all about my father's lockup in an earlier post (here).  It now seems that I was previously misinformed as to who was storing their car there, as I recently discovered that it wasn't someone in another row of terraces (as I'd been told), but the present tenant of my former house.  As I understand it, he rents my father's old lockup from either his neighbour or the current owner of my family's old abode, so I'll have to double-check what the situation actually is - purely to satisfy my own curiosity as I hate being bewildered.

However, forget all that - it's not really what this post is about.  No, it's about the 7 of spades.  Eh?  Well, you see, while along in my former neighbourhood a few weeks back, quite by chance I got to talking to the guy who now lives in my old house, without knowing he lived there until he chanced to mention it.  Naturally I was astounded by the coincidence.  I happened to mention that I harboured the suspicion that my brother may have left something in a space under the boards of one of the cupboards in what used to be my parents' room, and the guy said he'd take a look.  Anyway, he did, and though he didn't find what I was hoping for, he did find something.

And that something was the 7 of spades playing card you see in the above pic.  I can't say with absolute certainty whether my brother left it there, or one of the subsequent tenants after we flitted, but I prefer to think it comes from my family's time in the house (or maybe even before).  What I find significant, however, is that the house number is 77, and the face of the playing card sports a 7 in two corners - which is 77 if you have an imagination like mine.  Now, you may consider such things inconsequential, but little things like that make a great impression on me.

So that's me got one more souvenir of a childhood home I was happy in for nearly 7 years.  In fact, we moved out on the 14th day (which the more astute of you will immediately spot is two 7s.) of the 7th month of the 7th year, so the playing card continues the tradition of 7s connected to my former residence.

Anyone else find that interesting, or am I on my own (again)?


Since first publishing this post, I've been unable to shake the feeling that this card is familiar to me.  I now seem to have a vague memory of seeing it in the space under the cupboard boards when I lived in the house all those years ago.  Memory or imagination?  What do you think? 

4 comments:

  1. Yeah all the 7’s are pretty strange but the question is what did you think your brother had left in the house?

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    1. And the answer, McS, was a duffle-bag that contained a letter from the makers of Callan, confirming that there WAS going to be a new series. (It was probably the last one.) It also had the nose cone of my 2nd Quercetti Fireball XL5 parachute toy, bought from Johnny's in Rutherglen sometime in 1970. (Maybe even '69.)

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  2. My wife and I were feeling cramped in our old house, and it came to pass that our real estate agent found us a house that really wasn't on the market yet. We had been looking for 6 months and all the houses in our price range were crap. Anyway, our old house was 505 West Third Street, and we lived next to an old classmate of mine, Joe Stadler. When my wife saw the new house for the first time, (the one we are currently in), she felt like it was "home", so like a good husband I bought it for her. So we moved across town to 505 14th Avenue West, and our neighbor? Why, his name was Joe Stadler, who was NO relation to our other neighbor. In fact, neither of them knew of the other's existence, and I live in a small town. How's that for Twilight zone?

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  3. Amazing. Both houses were 505 and your neighbour had the same name? Twilight Zone indeed. Did each Joe live on the same side of each house? Funnily enough, I once had a next door neighbour called Billy Thompson. When we moved 5 minutes down the road, a neighbour the same age who lived just around the corner from me (a few houses away) was also called Billy Thompson. Couldn't say whether they both knew of one another or not.

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