It’s Friday the 13th, which means that any readers of this column who are lissom young women with loose morals and a propensity to wear revealing clothing which they might be persuaded to shed at a moment’s notice, should definitely steer clear of deserted holiday camps on the shores of lakes, and most certainly need to avoid anyone wearing a hockey mask and carrying a big knife.

Rather pointless remakes of old slasher movies notwithstanding, Friday the 13th is traditionally an unlucky day, which is bad news for anyone of a superstitious bent who already thinks that things can’t get any worse.

I can understand why the number 13 has historically unwelcome connotations, but quite why this is double jeopardy when allied to a Friday, I’m not really sure.

Interestingly, it’s when things are less than rosy that most of us fall back on our superstitious side, I think. When times are good we don’t bother to read our horoscopes, but when we aren’t exactly skipping through the metaphorical meadow of good times, then that’s when we pore over Jonathan Cainer and try to decipher whether his cryptic and portentous ramblings give us any indication as to whether we are actually going to win the lottery or not this week.

My own superstition of choice concerns magpies. I’m not quite sure where I picked this one up, but I think it was when a pal who lives up in the North East told me that it’s traditional around Newcastle to salute lone magpies and ask after their wives.

Ever since, I’ve always done it. I take it this refers to the old rhyme, best remembered via the theme tune to the Seventies kids’ teatime show on ITV, Magpie, presented by Keegan lookalike Mick Robertson. You remember: ‘One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.’ Saluting that lone magpie and asking after his wife is designed, I like to think, to negate the sorrow that seeing such a solitary pica pica might bring upon oneself.

So ingrained has my magpie superstition become that even my kids alert me if they see a lone magpie. Sometimes it’s not even a magpie – sparrows, pigeons, thrushes, anything will do. They even tried to get me to salute a frozen chicken in Asda last week. (Actually, I made that last bit up).

So today I will be doubly on my guard, because if a lone magpie’s bad luck on a normal day, what kind of thermonuclear ill-effects could seeing one on Friday 13th have? Should you have driven to work this morning behind someone saluting like a brownshirt with a twitch at a Nuremberg rally, then it was probably me.