The other day, my dear English friend Carol Towny (the daughter, as it turns out, of Peter Wollin, chess champion of the County of Hertfordshire in the 1960s), happened to mention a BBC Radio 2 personality with the odd name Fenella Fudge. I assumed this curious moniker must be a "stage name" (perhaps an allusion to the 70's rock band Vanilla Fudge), since it seemed to me few parents would be so cruel as to stamp their baby daughter with the highly mockable label "Fenella Fudge".
But when Carol professed ignorance of said rock band, I decided to do a little research, to determine once and for all the origin of this woman's psilly-psounding pseudonym. After searching for some time, I finally came across this page in the "Quite Interesting" talk forum, whereon it is peremptorily stated that not only is the name "Fenella Fudge" completely unconnected to the 70's rock band, it isn't a stage name at all: it's the woman's actual (if somewhat unfortunate) post-matrimonial designation.
But it was something else on that page that led me to the rather remarkable coincidence which is the subject of today's Chess Indeed post. A few entries further down in that discussion thread is a post about the Edgar Allan Poe novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, in which a sailor named Richard Parker is cannibalized by his starving companions. This fictional episode prefigured, with haunting accuracy, an identical true event which occurred 80 years later, in which a man with the same name perished in exactly the same way.
The link which accompanied this uncanny revelation pointed to a rather garish page of some UK psychic website, on which an excerpt from the Fortean Times had been pasted--and to my surprise, I found mentioned in that extract the names of two well-known chessplayers, Jonathan Tisdall and Michael Stean. It turned out the article was written by none other than GM James Plaskett, the one-time British chess champion who, among other notable achievements, once won a quarter of a million pounds in the UK version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
As it happens, Plaskett has a blog called Living the Dream: A Coincidence Diary, in which he recounts various coincidences which occur in his life, and also in the lives of people he knows. Clearly fascinated by coincidences, Plaskett has gone so far as to write a book about them, titled (appropriately) Coincidences.
Thus, a chance remark warbled out by an English bird, about a BBC radio personality with an absurd name, led me, by the unlikely route of Edgar Allan Poe and cannibalism, to the chess champion and quiz show winner James Plaskett: a condign conclusion to a curious concatenation of coincidences (though truth be told, I don't consider Plaskett the end of this particular chain of synchronicities, but rather a midway link--and I am currently perusing his blog to find the next link, whatever that may turn out to be--and wherever in this bizarre world it may lead in the end).
As always, my quillions of readers will be the first to know of any further developments along this intriguing line.
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