My mother was incredibly superstitious. She was forever flinging spilt salt over her shoulder, crossing her fingers or chanting incantations for luck. Particularly sharp in my mind are two rhymes that she would say out loud whenever the occasion demanded. The first, on seeing a dropped pin was: "See a pin and pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck". This was to be said quickly because apparently you weren't supposed to breath while stooping to pick up the pin and chanting the rhyme. As far as I was able to determine, the days on which my mother was lucky enough to find a pin were not noticeably fortunate. To my mind, the verse would have been more accurate if it went thus: "See a pin and pick it up and all day long you'll have a pin".

The second verse I remember was chanted whenever my mother saw a white horse. The verse was usually again chanted out loud, whoever was present, while wetting a finger and dragging it in the form of a cross on a shoe. The verse went like this: "White horse, white horse, bring me good luck; today or tomorrow I'll pick something up." The "something" in the verse was non-specific, presumably it referred to a pin. Either that or a virus from licking unwashed fingers.

I'm not superstitious myself, but I do habitually count magpies, when they gather in the field outside my window; mentally running through the song from the 1970's children's program as I count. I tell myself that the number of magpies can't possibly have a bearing on how my life will turn out but I can't help it. It is a compulsion that I have obviously picked up from my mother.

The problem here is that I am a little confused over the rules for counting magpies. Does one count the magpies spotted in a single sitting, as it were? Or is the method accumulative? Do you tot up all the magpies you spot in one day? I can't find anywhere on the internet that explains this. And how is the rhyme to be interpreted? One and Two are fairly explanatory, as are three and four if you know someone who is pregnant. But five for silver? Will I find some small change - or come second in an Olympic event? That's a big gamut.

However many magpies I see, and whichever method I choose to count them, my luck never seems to change. To be honest I've been having a pretty cruddy time of it lately so maybe you're supposed to count them in binary format...

1 for sorrow, 1 for sorrow, 1 for sorrow...