Think of all the accidents you might have had, the diseases from which you might have died, the natural disasters you might have been in, and how you might have been murdered or harmed yourself.

You mightn’t even have had to leave home for an unfortunate incident to occur. A plane could have landed on your house, you might have been electrocuted by your toaster, or your whole abode might have been consumed by fire.

Now think of the chances of your existence in the first place: the possibilities of your parents not meeting or falling in love or feeling frisky on the particular day you were created. There are the other places where you might have been born into severe poverty and your chances of reaching today would have been greatly reduced.

You are whizzing through space on a ball of rock, which has exactly the correct atmosphere and is at just the right distance from a particular star to create the conditions that support life as we know it.

And all the systems in your body are working with exactly the right balance needed to keep you alive.

You’re nothing short of a miracle and perfect just the way you are. Happy New Year!

Sales glee

CALL me a city girl but it’s wonderful to go shopping and to have sales assistants ignore me.

I’m on holidays in Sydney and browsing to my heart’s content without a whisper of a "how can I help you?" or "how are you today?", phrases that make a rather evil part of me want to say, "Well, seeing as you’ve asked ..." before pulling up a chair and launching into a litany of miseries.

I assume Cairns sales assistants are told to approach customers as soon as they put their toe on the premises, and it’s supposed to encourage people to buy but it has the opposite effect on me and makes me gallop out the door.

I cannot help but think they must consider me especially dumb. I mean, if you found something you liked and couldn’t see your size, it’s not difficult to spot the person with the name tag and a perpetual smile.

Or maybe they suspect I’m going to compress a rack of frocks into my handbag and sell them on eBay.

To my mind, buying is best conducted in an aggressive city style, with a series of survival hurdles that preclude you from making errors of judgment.

There’s stamina needed for browsing, and acting skills to feign no interest in something gorgeous a competitor has just snatched up. When they think it must be ugly and drop it, you speedily pounce.

Then comes the mental horrors of the changing room, where the sight of your flesh under fluorescent beams almost convinces you any clothes you have are better than what you see before you.

The penultimate hurdle is a queue so long you’ve time to float to the outer realms of the universe and back. If you return to your body by the time you reach the counter, you’ll take the final test of patience. It’s the person who sneaks in front of you to ask a question or return an item without so much as a nod in your direction.

This is your last out-clause. If you glance at your almost-purchase and aren’t really sure what it is, feel free to fire the object behind the counter.

You might as well give a sermon to anyone who pushes past you rudely en route home. "The words you’re looking for are excuse me" you can holler at their departing backs.

Give us this day our daily grievances and allow us our outlets of cathartic salvation.