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THURSDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER
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| Dear friend, |
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There is a name on the back of an envelope by my keys, given to me by somebody at a wedding in June, and I have not rung it.
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He is supposed to be good at the exact thing I have been stuck on since spring, which I know because the woman who gave me the name said so twice.
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All week you have been sending me strangers who turn up knowing your business, and every one of them did a job for somebody who had not asked.
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So today the symbol looks forward, and what it says is not that somebody will save you, but that the help is coming from a direction you are not watching.
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Where it comes from
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Think of the last piece of luck you had, the job or the flat or the person, and there is usually somebody standing at the start of it whom you barely knew at the time.
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People have read the kind stranger as a sign of help on the way for a very long time, and I will own that as folklore rather than evidence, so what you make of it is yours to decide.
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What I will say is duller and harder to argue with, which is that good things nearly always come through somebody, and the somebody is rarely the person you had in mind.
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Help arrives sideways, from people who were never on your list, which is why a list is a poor way to wait for it.
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Help arrives sideways, from people who were never on your list.
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