Is it really seven years bad luck to break a mirror? Probably not, but we thought we'd better check. So we asked (forced under threat of physical harm) two members of the DP team to find out. Here's what happened:

SEUN'S STORY:

Do you believe in luck? Most people will blame ‘luck’ for pretty much anything exceptionally good or bad that happens to them or their friends (or enemies) throughout their lives.

Cynical psychological types would argue that a belief in luck is indicative of a lack of personal responsibility on the part of the individual. They would say that many criminals, addicts and depressed street-living types would put the way their lives turned out down to ‘bad luck’ as opposed to ‘becoming a fucking junkie loser and never having a job ever’. I disagree with this. I think luck can be blamed for all of our fortunes and failures and am intending to prove it over one weekend of triple sneezes, four-leaf-clovers, swazzie’s and breaking glass: Here we go!

SNEEZING THREE TIMES: Way back in medieval times, they used to think sneezing was the soul escaping from the body. 10,000 years later we’ve moved on slightly to thinking it means good things are going to happen if we do it three times in succession (either that or you have the flu).

SWASTIK: Not a swastika silly! The swastik represents Ganesh the Hindu Lord of good fortune. Swastik actually means ‘purveyor of good fortune’ as opposed to ‘killer of blacks and Jews’ as the Nazi’s would have us believe. Protip: It MUST always be placed in a clockwise direction and must never be at an angle, that sort of thing leads to world wars and nuclear bombs being dropped on Japanese children (think of the children).

SMASHING THINGS MADE OF CLEAR GLASS: That’s the real reason those kids smashed up the Stephen Lawrence memorial building, they were feeling shitty about their lives and needed to boost their luck!

A FOUR-LEAF CLOVER: There are approximately one four-leaf clover for every 10, 000 three leaf clovers in the world. The old legend goes that the first leaf is for hope, the second faith, the third love and the fourth is for luck. Good luck trying to find one though, it’s practically impossible (I couldn't find one).

CRACKS IN THE FLOOR: Avoiding ending up on a crack is a sure-fire way of avoiding bad luck. At least that's what the homeless people at my local tube station tell me! I resolved to never step on one of those baby-killing, society-rotting, highly addictive cracks again.

RESULTS

SNEEZING: Everybody in the office has been sneezing for weeks. We must be the luckiest company ever! I suggested to both directors that nobody need come in for the next couple of weeks as our amazing good luck should pull us through to the end of the month. For some reason they didn’t agree.

SWASTIK: I decided to try my good luck out by going down the bagel shop in Brick lane with my swastik-emblazoned t-shirt and three pounds (lucky number) for a scratch-card and a bagel. This did not end well - the staff refused to serve me for some reason AND I lost on the scratch card. No points for lady-luck so far.

SMASHING: Can you believe I cut my hand a bit while smashing the glass bottle. Wow, luck can truly suck.

FOUR LEAF: Another chance for luck to shine was during the Grand National. I don’t really know anything about betting so I just scribbled some stuff on one of the cards and handed it to the woman along with a fiver and my four-leaf clover, then went home and waited for the money to roll in. It hasn’t so far but maybe if I wait a few more days my bank balance might go up.

CRACKS: I avoided the cracks all weekend and still won nothing. Maybe Frank doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about after all.

PETER'S STORY:

I don’t believe in Luck. It’s a word than encapsulates a series of false concepts - human understanding wrestling with the random nature of the universe. The idea of luck is a mechanism we use to interpret the everyday happenings of our lives, in order to cope with the terrifying indifference of the world. You can win the lottery or you can get terminal cancer and it doesn't matter what you’ve done up until that point, it'll just happen. 

For those who believe in Luck, it’s not too much of a step to believe that we can manipulate it by doing (or avoiding) arbitrary and meaningless things. These beliefs are a comfort and this is why we’ve kept them around, why they’re part of long standing tradition.

But but despite my logical rejections of the concept of luck, I still accept it in a passive way. This pisses me off, so I’m going to make a statement of defiance to silly superstition.

For the second week of our luck issue I decided to go with my head. To prove how meaningless superstition is I opened an umbrella inside, spilled salt, passed beneath a ladder and broke a mirror. It’s been three days and nothing has happened to me. I’m fine.

Here’s me doing some unlucky stuff. I urge everyone reading this to do some too.

BREAKING A MIRROR: Like, oh noes! Don't break a mirror, mirrors are windows to the soul! If you break one you'll have SEVEN YEARS of bad luck! What is this 50 B.C.? Everybody knows that your browser cookies are the window to the soul. Nobody gets all funny about deleting the hell out of those every week, do they?

THROWING SALT: Salt used to be valuable, so spilling the stuff was seen as a bad omen. You were supposed to throw it over your shoulder to hit the devil in the face as he creeps up on you. Lucifer is way too hard to care about salt in his face. You'll just piss him off and he'll crush your head in his fist. Leave it.

OPEN AN UMBRELLA INDOORS: Blah blah blah opening an umberella indoors is an affront to the pagan rain gods blah blah blah eternal damnation blah blah. Whatever.

CRAWLING UNDER A LADDER: A ladder leaning on a wall forms the triangle of the holy trinity. Walking through it desecrates God and turns you over to Satan. Rumor has it that Saddam Hussien thought this was all bullshit, too.

RESULTS

I did all of this stuff on Friday. On Saturday during the day I scraped my foot on the side of the bed and it nearly drew blood! Spooky, right? Then later that day I went to buy a newspaper but didn’t have any change and had to use a ten pound note! Then newsagent didn’t have any fivers and I had to take my change in two pound coins! I was totally gutted and was really starting to regret tempting fate at this point until something amazing happened. I went out for a meal on Saturday night and my friends chicken was still raw inside! My lovely vegetarian dish, however was cooked to perfection. Isn’t that lucky? I guess I don’t know what to believe now!