Hey guys, can you help me out a little? The last few weeks I’ve experienced an omen. Or maybe it’s an auspice. A sign. Could even be a miracle.

That’s the trouble, you see. I don’t know which. And even if, with your help, I manage to work it out, I still don’t know what it all means.

You see, there I was in my favourite coffee shop waiting for my cappuccino to cool a little. I happened to look over at it and saw two dead flies floating on the surface. So naturally, I called over the server and said – you know what’s coming – ‘waiter, there’s a fly or two in my drink’. Now whether the flies had been getting it on with each other and decided the froth on my coffee was a good place to do it, I don’t know, but it led to their demise: death by conjugal drowning.

I got a fresh coffee.

Skip forward a few days and I’m about to have a nice glass of Merlot in my favourite Italian restaurant. There on the top, just after it’s been poured, is a solitary swimmer, another of God’s blessed little creatures backstroking its way around my glass in ever erratic circles. After I paraphrase the old joke again, the waiter removes the glass, fishes out the drunken fly and returns my wine. Or maybe he poured a fresh glass. Who knows.

And then – yes, you know what’s coming – a few days after that I’m having another cappuccino in a third establishment when another of the little blighters tops itself in my drink. That’s three times in only a few days. I mean twice would be a coincidence but three times! As Ian Fleming almost said, ‘once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern’. There was a pattern to my flysome encounters, and we know what a pattern means: it means a pattern maker! An intelligence behind this series of unfortunate events. But which? And what did they all mean? A pattern has to have meaning! What was the message I was being sent from the supernatural plane?

Was it an omen? A portent? A sign from above? Was God telling me something? If so what? Maybe you guys can help.

I just realised though that there’s a Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub, who might be trying to communicate with me. (Is there a Lord of the Slugs and a Lord of the Flatfish too? Logic dictates there should be… but I digress). In the Word of God (Mark 3:24 etc), Beelzebub is none other than the devil in disguise, an alter-ego of old pal Satan.

What’s Satan/Beelzebub trying to say to me by directing flies to land in my beverages? I really need to know. If only these all-powerful supernatural types could be a little clearer.