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1.       The birth & death of my goddaughter. Had labour pains the night she was born & took a strange turn on the beach the afternoon she was drowned in a pool aged 10. I’m told I looked very strange & was unable to breathe. I read of her drowning in the paper next day – we lived in Dunedin & she was in Auckland. I saw her rarely as we lived out of Auckland for most of her life.

2.       When her father died years later, my alarm clock stopped. It later kept going quite happily with no need to replace the battery. Why? When I boarded with the family, aged 18, he played a joke one Sat night by setting the alarm to go off behind a tallboy in my room in the wee small hours!

3.       Mother –in-law lived in Perth WA. The evening of her funeral (in Perth) our dishwasher (in Rotorua) stopped for no reason – thought it was a power cut at first. On restarting it thought immediately it might be connected with her funeral. A few days later we stayed a night with Mike’s brother when we discussed how Mum B always treated us, as couples, equally i.e. gifts. On our return home next evening a message on the phone from my brother in law: “Wanting to discuss why his dishwasher packed up after casting spells!” Theirs had the opposite occurrence to ours – it wouldn’t stop. It had to be manually bailed out. We all felt it significant that both dishwashers were affected.

4.       The afternoon the family in NZ gathered in Auckland to inter her ashes brought back from Perth. As they were placed in the family plot beside a deceased son & Dad B a violent thunder storm took place – we all felt her laughing & letting us know she was going out with a bang!

5.       A man known to us died. Shortly after, three planes went over ours & the neighbour’s house behind us. An unusual occurrence to have three at once. The down draught lifted my clothes line (attached to the fence) & collapsed it sending a sheet over the fence onto next door’s drive. Our friend was in charge of Civil Aviation runway lighting in his working life.

6.       A neighbour used to phone on the fourth Thursday of each month for me to collect the monthly Community News delivery from her letter box. She died Xmas Day 2009. On New Year’s Eve, the day after her funeral, my phone rang once at 8 am – it was the fourth Thursday of the month.

7.       April 2010 three people died within eight days: two were named Doug. The following weekend our phone rang 1x on day one, 2x on day 2 & 3x on day 3. My mother was here on the second day & heard it.

8.       A good friend died in Wellington. I was awoken by a cell phone like ring. The last time we were together she’d been learning how to text & gave me a demo.

9.       My mother: the funeral was delayed three weeks due to family being away overseas. In the interim, eldest great-granddaughter was at home alone for a few days. She got a dreadful fright when a bird flew in her bedroom window. Around the same time, in the middle of the night, one of our daughter’s cats brought in a native banded stitchbird (a species being protected at the sanctuary near their home) & let it go in the bathroom. At the time they were amazed that the cat had found it during the night. It took a few days for me to connect the two events to my mother who incidentally loved birds.

10.   Mother died a few days before we got back from UK. In Hong Kong we were queue jumped & unexpectedly a staff member of Cathay Pacific sent our bags to NZ with Business Class labels attached as a small recompense (we weren’t in the least bothered by the queue jump). I later realised that as my mother always travelled Business Class we should send her coffin off labelled Business Class!

11.   In past two weeks following a brother-in-law's death two light bulbs have blown in our house. Whilst we were in WA for his funeral, the room light in the three-in-one heat lamp in their bathroom went out whilst his daughter was in the bath. Next day, we were about to replace the bulb but it was going again & didn’t need to be replaced after all.