IF you’re reading this, you survived Friday the thirteenth. Ironically it’s one of the days when we are least likely to have an accident – probably due to reverse psychology; we’re so worried about something going wrong on that day that we take extra care.

Friday has long been considered an inauspicious day. According to Christian tradition, Jesus died on a Friday so although that particular Friday is called ‘Good’, Fridays are generally considered unlucky.

Chaucer wrote that it was bad luck to start a journey or project on a Friday, which may help explain why so many offices are suspiciously empty on a Friday..

We can blame the Americans for the prevalence of the superstition. In 1881 the Thirteen Club was created to try to debunk the idea that 13 was an unlucky number to have at a dinner table – the thirteenth one being destined to die. On September 13 that year (a Wednesday) the 13 founding members sat down to dinner to plan: they’d meet on the 13th of every month – publicly tempting fate.

The club became popular. It had over 400 members and numbered five US presidents among its honorary members. But alas, despite its many surviving members, its popularity only served to give greater awareness to the superstition they were trying to discredit. Triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13) was here to stay.

So if you’re superstitious and survived Friday, you should now try to avoid things such as ravens, magpies (unless there’s two), black cats, ladders, and be very careful with salt and mirrors. Breaking anything glass is bad luck, as anyone with a pet or toddler will know, but breaking a mirror is said to result in seven years of it. We can blame the Romans for that particular superstition.

They considered one’s reflection an expression of one’s soul. If someone of ill health looked in a mirror, the mirror would break and a run of misfortune would befall the looker for seven years – the time the Romans believed it took for a life to ‘renew’.

The Roman remedy: take all the pieces of the mirror and bury them in the moonlight. Again, not recommended for pet owners. If I try and bury anything in the garden, like the dead mouse the cat recently donated (she being as surprised as anyone that she actually caught something!) then Barney the beagle assumes I am doing it to prevent him getting his paws on it, that it therefore must be worth having and promptly digs it back up.

The reality, of course, is that we have little or no control over many of the events in our lives. Sometimes we feel lucky, sometimes unlucky and which we believe ourselves to be is a matter of choice.

Personally, I’m not at all superstitious; just thankful that I’ve had more than my fair share of luck (fingers crossed, touch wood)…