127. Invisible string

Establishing a connection without even knowing it.

Mixed media artwork by Rebecca

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Dear Reader,

This time last year I wrote to let you know that I love you. Here’s a reminder:

1. ♥️ I love you.

2. ♥️ I love that you’re reading this letter.

3. ♥️ I love that you click the little heart at the bottom of any of my posts that you’ve enjoyed.

4. ♥️ I love that you leave such thoughtful and engaging comments, and that you like to stick around for a conversation.

5. ♥️ I love that you’re one of my subscribers.
   (And I love that if you’re not, you might be thinking about it.)

6. ♥️ I love it when you tell me that you look forward to my Saturday morning posts every week, and that you can set your clock by them.

7. ♥️ I love that you’re spending your time reading my words.

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To mark Valentine’s Day this year I’d like to tell you about someone else I love, but before I begin the story I’d like to share what had prompted me to write it.

A news article I read last week introduced me to ‘invisible string theory’: an ancient concept where two soulmates who are destined to meet are connected by an invisible thread. The story told of a viral Instagram post which had shown a woman and her future husband in a photograph which had been taken two years before they’d met, with one comment on the post reading:

🔗 Isn’t it just so pretty to think, all along there was an invisible string?

Screenshot taken from this article about Invisible String Theory on Linked In

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One day at my job in the office of a local estate agent I had taken a phone call.

‘Could you please add me to your mailing list?’ asked the friendly chap on the other end of the line. I was taking down his details when something in his e-mail address caught my attention.

‘Jimpix?’ I asked him. ‘Are you an artist?’

‘No’, he told me, ‘I’m a photographer.’

I talked him through some of the properties we had on our books, and promised to send him some particulars. I was smiling when I put the phone down.

My colleague at the next desk was curious. ‘You’re looking pleased with yourself! Who was that?’

I shrugged. ‘Just an applicant. Nice chap, that’s all.’

Weeks later a colleague who’d just got in from conducting an accompanied viewing at one of the houses we were marketing made straight for my desk.

‘You’d really like this chap I’ve just shown around that little stone cottage near the roundabout!’ she told me. ‘He’s ever so tall!’

I sighed. Why did people always think that my lofty height would be the thing I’d be desperate to match with any potential partner I might be considering? Reader, there’s more to me than that, and besides, I was happy being single.

‘I’m not really looking.’ I smiled at her.

‘No, but he was great. You’d get on really well!’

I wasn’t listening. I grabbed some papers and headed for the copying room.

‘And he’s got a little dog!’ she told me, slightly desperately, as I passed.

‘Well then!’ The matter was settled. ‘I’m not all that keen on dogs.’

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Around a year and a half later I was making plans of my own to move: to a small house in a village not far away. The property needed some work, and my parents had seized the project with gusto. Dad was busy taking down the rotten gazebo one afternoon when a head he recognised popped up, jack-in-the-box style, above the fence in next door’s garden.

From ‘Father Tuck’s Tiny Tots’ series published by Raphael Tuck & Sons Ltd, circa 1890. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

‘When’s Rebecca moving in?’ The head of the jack-in-the-box belonged to the son of one of Mum’s friends, a guy a few years older than me whom I’d first met when I was very small and he slightly less so.

‘Not for a bit!’ Dad replied, and after a brief chat he got back to his task.

Every so often over the next few weeks this conversation would be repeated, the jack-in-the-box – okay, let’s just call him Jack – an enthusiastic feature popping up regularly above the fence line.

In due course I moved in to the new house, and early one Friday evening in June I answered a knock at the front door. It was Jack.

‘We’re having a barbecue, and meeting a friend at the pub first’, he announced. ‘Wanna come?’ His eyes twinkled.

I hoped I was sounding brighter than I felt. ‘Erm, do you mind if I don’t? This week’s been a long one.’

Jack was employed in sales, and he was, I’m afraid to say, also rather charming. With such tools at his disposal it didn’t take him long to convince me – the world’s most socially-anxious person – to join him.

‘Good!’ he said, annoyingly triumphant. ‘We’ll come and get you in half an hour.’

Giving me just about enough time to spruce myself up, Jack and his girlfriend duly called for me, and we walked up to the pub together. Conscious that I didn’t yet know anyone in the village I was nervous at the prospect of being out in company when I’d much rather have been at home with a book.

🙄

On that sunny summer’s evening the tables outside the front of the pub were populated with people enjoying their start-of-the-weekend wind-down. There were plenty of folk standing, too, chatting away as they nursed pints of the local ale or tall glasses of white wine and soda.

At one table sat a gorgeous young lady. The very tall man she was with had Sideshow Bob¹ hair and was wearing joke spectacles; with ‘eyeballs’ on springs leaping away from his face as he moved his head around wildly to make the girl laugh. No, they were both laughing.

This representation of Sideshow Bob’s hairstyle was drawn by Rebecca

‘You lucky thing!’ said the voice in my head to the girl. ‘He looks lovely.’

When Jack went inside to get us a drink his girlfriend sat down opposite Sideshow Bob and Lucky Girl, patting the seat next to her to indicate that I should join them.

‘Oh, there he is!’ said Lucky Girl, getting up to join a handsome chap who’d just arrived beside one of the standing groups. He put his arms around her and gave her a fond squeeze.

My eyes were wide as I looked across to Sideshow Bob. Was he the friend Jack had said we’d be meeting?

Jack arrived with our drinks. Laughing, he sat down next to the man with the crazy hair and glasses. ‘What are you like? Jim, this is Rebecca. She’s just moved in next door to me. Rebecca, meet Jim.’

At this stage neither Sideshow Bob Jim nor I had any idea that this was a set-up engineered by Jack, who’d been quizzing Dad as to when I’d be moving in just so that he could introduce us. Jim and I chatted all evening: firstly outside the pub, then at Jack’s barbecue. He walked me home², and we arranged to see each other next day. ‘Let’s go for a walk!’ he suggested. ‘You can meet my dog.’³

We exchanged numbers and e-mail addresses.

‘Hang on!’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘Jimpix? I know you!’

‘Do you? How come?’

I explained to him that I’d taken down his details when he’d rung the estate agent’s office. ‘Oh, you work there, do you? I only viewed one house through them, actually.
It was a little stone cottage near a roundabout.’

♥️

With my love, dear Reader, for Valentine’s Day,

Rebecca xxx

Mixed media artwork by Rebecca. This is a picture from my archive with its own story to tell, which I’m saving for a future post.

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📚 Regular readers of ‘Dear Reader, I’m Lost' will be no strangers to my ongoing light-hearted letter-writing project with fellow Brit

Terry Freedman

of Eclecticism: Reflections on literature and life. It’s his turn to reply to me on Wednesday! You can find the archive of our chortlesome correspondence here.

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1. Sideshow Bob is a character voiced by Kelsey Grammer in the animated TV series The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening. You can see Bob’s actual picture and read all about him (and his dastardly ways, for he is a bad ‘un!) by clicking here (Wikipedia link). 😁

2. Okay, it was just next door, but still.

3. At around this time I may have begun to be slightly more keen on dogs than I had been previously. 🤣