34

34

The alarm was set for 2:15, but for some reason I woke up and the clock said 12:34. I managed to get back to sleep for the remaining 1 hour 41 minutes before I had to get up and get ready for work – sorting parcels in a huge, cold, warehouse.

Next night, the same happened, waking at exactly 12:34 – uncanny. When it happened again the following night, it was more than just uncanny, it was quite weird.

Ten years on, I’m not sorting parcels, but the number 34 hasn’t left me alone. I’m not a clock-watcher, but I probably see 34 past the hour at least 4 times a day, and I’m sure that number occurs more than any other in news and sports reports, not including rounded-off number such a 100s, 1000s, etc.

When it first happened, I didn’t tell anyone because I thought that would bring it to an end. It was probably a year before I mentioned it, expecting that would kill the phenomena off, but it didn’t.

I’m sure I’m not obsessed with number 34. For example, I’m not sitting in my van purposely waiting for the mid-hour news or traffic report to finish and waiting a bit until I glance at the clock in the hope that it’s on 34 past again, but is something inside making me do that unconsciously?

Am I looking for the number when I read the paper? I don’t think I am, but again, am I being directed to it somehow? When Beckham turned 35 I thought that would reduce its occurrence, but it’s still around, and often.

The time on the clock can’t be monitored, but is there some number anorak who trawls every newspaper for number patterns? I expect there is, and he or she, but more likely, no, definitely, a he, has a website full of strange and insignificant patterns of words, numbers and other trivia.

There might well be someone else who saw a repetition of, say, 17 past the hour a few times, and now notices that number in the papers, and thinks that it is the most common number in the press. We can’t both be right.

I’ve just realised that 17 is half of 34, and I just plucked it out the air. It wasn’t in the air, of course, but in my mind, and maybe something is making that happen.

My daily exercises included sets of stretches held for 30 seconds, and 25 or 30 reps for press-ups and crunches, but now everything is 34.

Now this is weird. I just looked up the stats for this document. No, it’s not 340 words long or any multiple of 34, or nothing to link in 34 to the lineage, or character count. I haven’t checked that though. No, what was weird on that stat check was that the total editing time was 34 minutes!

Help!