Suppose you are a young woman:

Just imagine that one afternoon, accompanied by two friends, you visit a fortune teller. One of your friends learns that she will have a terrible accident, not fatal but horrible, while your other friend is told she will lose someone very close to her quite soon. You on the other hand, are told that something will come into your name, that you will meet a man with blond hair and blue eyes and travel the world. Would you believe that? Then a few months later your friend has a terrible motor accident. Not long afterwards your father gives you the money to buy a house. Six months later you go with your friends to the horse races and there you meet that young man with blond hair and blue eyes. Really? Almost immediately you fall in love and on just your 3rd date he asks for marriage? Really? Yes, really!

Or, suppose you are a young man:

Just imagine that you are posted at short notice to a faraway country with a very different culture about which you know little and that after just a few days you meet and fall in love with a stunningly beautiful Sophia Loren look-a-like young woman, whose appearance exceeds your wildest dreams. She is educated and intelligent and a minister’s secretary. Within days you fall so profoundly in love that on just your third date you unpremeditatedly ask for her hand in marriage but wake up the next morning as from a dream denying that you ever asked such a question. You are in such a state of shock you want to escape from your commitment. Progressively you realise that you are as helpless as a lobster in a lobster pot and despite all the obstacles to such an unlikely pairing, you eventually marry her. A few months later your bride reveals that this match had been foretold by a fortune teller, and she has the proof to substantiate her assertion. Really? Yes, really!

Explanation:

I was that young man. Those dramatic unexpected events occurred more than 50 years ago but are as fresh in my mind today as if they had happened last week. For years I have woken every morning to feel a fortune teller tapping me on the shoulder and asking, ‘Have you published that book yet?’ She adds: ‘You know all my predictions came true. Why don’t you tell the world?’

That fortune teller was right, all her predictions came true, and I am left asking ‘are we really in control of our destinies?’ Anyone reading this book will find a tentative answer to that seemingly imponderable question. They will also learn – just as I have learned – that initiating a consultation with a psychic or astrologer is a matter to be taken very seriously indeed.