I’m learning to be a fortune teller, or a clairvoyant to give it its fancy name. It’s by correspondence course and it takes two years you know.  ye need to study for hours and hours every week. . .My father was a seventh son of a seventh son. That’s where I get it from. He always said he had the second sight, my dad. It’s dangerous you know, if you don’t know what you’re doing. My dad always said that. Really dangerous.

He said he knew lots of things about people but wouldn’t tell them in case something bad happened to them and he got the blame. .  . But he was amazin’, my dad. Every Friday night, he w..ould say ”Milk-man’s comin!” and sure enough a minute or two later, or a wee while anyway, the doorbell would ring and it was the milkman wanting his week’s money. And when the phone rang, he’d say “That’ll be our Jack”, or Eilleen, or whoever, and he was always right…well nearly always…well quite often.  It drove my mother mad. He was brilliant my dad.

He never sat any exams though. He read a lot about it, though. but he never sat any exams. He couldn’t do it official. But he was very careful after the thing with the next-door neighbour. He told her that her husband was havin an affair and she up an left him the next day and the poor guy tried to commit… to do away with himself.

(She looks in the plastic bag again, puzzled)

But he was brilliant my Dad. His favourite was numerology. That’s how we got our names, me and my sister Madi (pr. Maidy), my wee sister, she’s twenty-five and getting married next month. That’ll never work though. I know it’ll never work. . . my da made us promise, ye see, when he was dyin, that we’d never change our names.

It’s the numbers you see. He said he had to make a name that added up to twenty-two, that was the very best name to have, a twenty-two, it’s the cleverest and got loads of talent, the number of the “Master Magician” he used to say. So he worked out the surname. That’s Dickie, D.I.C.K.I.E. That came to fourteen so he had to get another eight so I’m Daisi, that’s D.A.I.S.I. nothin else just D.A.I.S.I..

You’ve no idea the bother it’s caused.