Sikh your fortune

Surin Beach, Phuket

A Sikh masquerading as a fortune teller used all his powers of manipulating my post-Patong fragility to free me of 2000 baht on Surin beach today.

He could deduce immediately I was a very wealthy man (he must’ve spotted the Twin Palms umbrella next to me) and that I was too easy going with money. That I was prepared to listen to his ramblings was another giveaway.

Apparently I’m going to live to 93 – which is a turn up for the books – and I’ve got a lucky forehead. There was me just thinking it was merely sunburnt. What is lucky about it I don’t know and it was enough to raise the guard. Only last night, two Thai bar girls kept telling my travelling companion he had a ‘lucky cock’ immediately prior to wiping him out on yet another game of Connect Four (in 1939 a French General told Churchill that England alone would be defeated in weeks by the Nazi’s like a chicken having it’s neck broken to which Churchill later commented ‘Some chicken! Some neck’. Here we have a case of ‘Some cock! Some luck!’)

Also he told me I was in a relationship last year that didn’t work. Well, that hardly takes psychic powers as cursory glance at me is enough to deduce that one. That and the matter I’m a man of a certain age sat with two other blokes sharing a hangover on a beach in Thailand is probably the giveaway. You don’t need to be a Sikh mystic to spot my sort. I can spot men who’ve got a predilection for beautiful but unstable women – they carry a haunted look in their eyes, have been in a world where nothing quite adds up and have to pick up the pieces if anything ceases to be perfect for a split second and can usually be found all over town, invariably heading towards a bar. Some psychic.

I’d have been more impressed if he’d gone for it and correctly stated that I’m in relationships that don’t work each and every year. So where does this lucky forehead come into it – or is it the forehead that is sparing me from being in a situation I can’t cope with? Maybe I should start moisturising and taking care of it as a mark of reverence, perhaps even have it polished for special occasions and QPR games.

He did, however correctly guess my age which at 36 is a long shot given I look in my late 20’s or that’s certainly the estimation of the bar girls last night and I heartily concur. What did stagger me somewhat as he squeezed his beads was he announced that there was a big age gap between myself and the last girlfriend.

One could sense my companions suddenly warming up to this as if I hadn’t told them about some Glitteresque indiscretion. Say that to some people and he’d have got chinned for calling them a nonce. Even I wondered what figure he was going to pluck out of the air and tensed up as his little psychic Sikh mind went into overdrive, but instead of shouting out to the diners of the Twin Brother Beach restaurant that my last serious relationship was with a pubescent he nailed it. My last ex is 25.

How did he know this? More to the point how did I end up paying 2,000 baht to a man in a turban to tell me how old I was? Or for raking up my relationship with The Last One (I still puff out my cheeks whenever I hear the city of Cordoba mentioned) whilst trying to unwind and escape.

It all changes, however, on July 27. Apparently I’m going to have a defining moment and a lucky day that will change my life forever thanks to his prayer for me. Most mornings I wake up declaring it’s all going to change, but now a date has been set. Watch this space. I bet I get run over.