Is it really a coincidence everyone seems to be dying?

The funeral drinks at McCarthy’s bar was splendid, and towards the end we got invited to another one.

I was sitting at the bar with a bowl of soup and a plate of neatly cut cheesy sandwiches, while the builder boyfriend drank a pint of Murphy’s, when the bar owner leaned over and told us that the next one was at a different bar, so when we had all drunk up and the sandwiches were eaten everyone was going to be heading off down the road, if we would like to join them.

In truth, I would have liked to go, for I had so enjoyed this wake I would have followed them to the second of the day.

The rate of funerals is at such an alarming level, with so little explanation, that I’ve moved on from worrying about the excess death rate to worrying about the excess coincidence rate.

I’ve never known so many people say it’s just a coincidence that so many people are dying.

Every time someone dies, and I point out that this follows loads of other people dying, someone says it’s a coincidence.

The rate of someone telling me ‘it’s just a coincidence’ is now running at a couple of times a week, which in itself I would question as odd. The coincidence-mongers will, no doubt, tell me that the number of people telling me it’s just a coincidence is just a coincidence.

The rate of coincidence, in other words, has become a coincidence. But back to the funeral…

This bar is one small room so that you feel you are sitting in someone’s private home. There is racing perpetually on the television in the corner and the proprietor, a horse man who has his own gallops at his farm down the road, stands behind the bar chatting with his customers while various female relatives, his wife and daughters I presume, work away in a small kitchen beyond the bar, emerging to serve their guests with steaming plates of delicious home-cooked food.

A puppy gambols about the owner’s feet and is occasionally passed to a group of young girls seated beneath the horse-racing so they can cuddle it.