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When I was a ‘teen-ager at college in England, on a few occasions, my Mother would come over from Ireland and take me out to stay with friends at the half-term break. Occasionally we went to visit friends in Bordon, Hampshire. During one of these visits, our friends invited a fortune-teller, Minnie, from Bordon to come and entertain us. However, I was to discover that this was no idle entertainment. It was the real thing. I was informed that Minnie could indeed see into the future with incredible accuracy, and not only that, she could see beyond the grave to “the other side”, and describe in detail dear friends and relatives who had recently died and from whom she could receive communication. Her technique was to hold some object which you had habitually kept on your person, such as your watch, and would focus her concentration on it. She would not go into a trance, but would be totally concentrated, and you could ask her questions without unduly destroying her concentration, and she would also ask you questions to clarify what she was seeing. She was given absolutely no information about us prior to the session. She had no idea where we came from, or anything about our background. There was nothing fake about the procedure, and she certainly did not look on it as idle entertainment. I was very sceptical about the whole performance, and nervously handed her my watch. At first she talked, what I would consider, absolute “gobbledigook”, but very shortly she became very specific. “I can see somebody giving you a pound note. Have you received a present of a pound to-day?” I said that I had not. Now a pound sterling 40 years ago was the equivalent of about 40 euro to-day; presents of this size were rare in the extreme. She said: “Oh, well, if you have not received it yet you will very shortly”. I thought “This is going to be a real test of whether Minnie is genuine or not”. That night, I was singing in the choir at a college concert, and at the end, as I was leaving the platform, my Godfather, who had been in the audience, rushed through the crowd, stuffed a pound note into my pocket, and ran off. I was stunned. Minnie also forecast that my career would take me to India, and she could see green fields stretching away over the hills as far as the eye could see. Five years later, I joined the Irish tea trade, and my work did indeed take me to India on a number of occasions. The “green fields” were the carpet of tea bushes which, in some places, do indeed cover the ground as far as the eye can see. My mother’s experience with Minnie was even more astonishing. She said “I can see you are going to have a close association with two men for some considerable time. Their names are Coldwell and McCormick. Do you know any men with these names?” My mother said she had never known anyone with these names. Now the name “Coldwell” is rare. In fact there is only one Coldwell in the entire Dublin telephone directory. My mother assumed that Minnie was mistaken and thought nothing more about it. My mother had a boat (a “Dublin Bay Mermaid”) moored at the National Yacht Club in Dunlaoghaire Harbour. She was a keen sailor, and used to race three times a week. On returning home from England, she went down to the Yacht Club to check up that the boat was all right. The head boatman came up to her and said “ Mrs Aylmer, two men have been down here asking if anyone needs a crew in the races. They have left their details up on the Club notice board.” My mother was indeed looking for someone to crew with her, and went over to the notice board. When she looked up on the board, she froze. The names on the board were Mr.Coldwell and Mr McCormick. She made contact with these two charming gentlemen, and they raced with her in the boat for at least the next two years. These experiences had a dual affect on me. On the one hand, It was wonderful, and comforting to think that someone could look into the future with such accuracy, and for whom death was a rather flimsy partition separating us from two modes of existence. On the other hand, there were disturbing implications. If Minnie could see into our future lives, it followed that our lives are predestined --- all planned out in advance. It meant that we have no control over our lives whatsoever, and that everything is pre-ordained. This concept was, and still is, totally unacceptable to me. If it is so, why do we bother? Eat, drink and be merry, have sex with the prettiest maidens, and let rip!! We have free will, and a certain amount of control over our destiny, don’t we? Our actions have consequences which can change the course of our lives, and those of others, do they not? On the other hand, I thought that if I do “let rip”, perhaps that was pre-ordained as well! I had no answer to this mystery. What these experiences taught me at a very early age was that there are unfathomable mysteries in this life which may never be solved, and that no theory or dogma, scientific or religious, is cast in stone for ever, not even Einstein’s theory of relativity. “Action and Re-action are equal and opposite?” Not so. Think again, Einstein!
Dennis Aylmer.
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