Divine comedy

Carolyn sent me another of her out-of-the-blue text messages on Monday:

Have you ever used those water-finding sticks? I'm going to make some tonight out of coat hangers.

I texted her back to explain that the word she was looking for was diviners (not dividers, as I had overheard some bloke say the previous week, while he was trying to chat up a very bored-looking woman). I also explained that divining was "utter bollocks, obviously".

Carolyn then texted back to say that she had tried it with coat hangers before and "it definitely worked".

After a few more texts, I rang her. "This has got something to do with bees, hasn't it?" I said. Carolyn laughed. It was indeed to do with bees.

It turned out that she planned to go dowsing to look for a suitable fault line to situate her bee-hive near. Yes, she was still going on about that bollocks about fault lines.

I pointed out that using divining rods to detect energy vibrations emanating from fault lines was using a technique which doesn't work to detect something which doesn't exist emanating from something which isn't there.

Which is how I came to find myself standing in a dark field holding a pair of bent coat-hangers on Tuesday night:

"It works! It works!" screamed Carolyn as her coat-hangers crossed.

"It doesn't work; you tilted your hands," I said.

"No I didn't; they definitely moved!" said Carolyn. "Here, you have a go!"

So I had a go. Walking over exactly the same spot, I watched open-mouthed as my two coat-hangers miraculously did not cross, but splayed wide apart.

"You moved your hands!" said Carolyn.

I think not. The dowsing rods had evidently detected my negative vibes.

It's the only logical explanation.