Cosmic codes

Iam a great one for omens. So the arrival in my inbox of two emails, completely unconnected, from two different people called Dirk had to be interpreted as a sign. The chances of two people in Britain being called Dirk outside the pages of comedy science fiction are pretty slim. The chances of them both emailing me within minutes of each other are remote to the point of being science fictional.

Now, here’s what is even weirder. Both Dirks sent their emails twice. So my inbox had four Dirks lined up one after the other between the hours of 4.38 and 5.08 p.m. The usual nonstop flow of spam halted mysteriously between those times, so that no one else interrupted the flow of Dirks.

The first Dirk was Dirk Ingram. He was from a company called BandA Marketing and was trying to sell me a timeshare in the Kruger National Park in South Africa.