Stella Gibbons's novel My American has inspired a whole series of articles.
Examples of amazing 'coincidences' and synchronicity where something I was thinking about manifested in my life also appear in several articles.
I have a a little tale to tell about how a passage in My American that caught my attention was followed by a related 'coincidence'.
The My American extract and the memories it brought back
“All this time Amy had sat in silence, wearing a red and white checked cotton frock from a shop in the Holloway Road where dozens more hung outside on a rail...”
These words immediately reminded me of a shop in the Holloway Road that I frequently walked past when I lived in the area many years ago. It had a lot of very cheap gingham garments in a variety of colours strung up outside. Shops didn't change hands and purpose in the past anything like as frequently as they do now, so it could well have been the same shop.
This is not the amazing coincidence: Stella Gibbons was just describing a shop that she had seen on her travels in the area, a shop where some of her characters might buy casual clothes.
Anyway, I remember noticing at the time that the clothes looked crudely sewn and as if they had been run up in a hurry. Although I quite liked the mauve gingham frocks and blouses, they had very wide necklines so I wasn't tempted to get one.
After going over my memories of this shop, I started to think about gingham in general. Schoolgirls often have dark green gingham dresses for example, and I remembered reading that pink gingham sold out everywhere after the film star Brigitte Bardot wore it!
The gingham coincidence
A day or so later, with gingham still on my mind, I went to dispose of some rubbish. There is a nearby shelf where people leave things that they have no use for but others might like.
I found a cardboard mug carrier there; it was intended for a set of four but had only three inside. The mugs and their carrier had a gingham design on them! Four different colours were involved.
I took the three mugs, but as I didn't really need them I passed them on to someone who said that she could use them as her little boy sometimes breaks things when 'helping' with the washing up!
The mugs I found were similar to these ones:
