Fate is a cruel mistress

Did you see this news story that floated onto the net and other channels yesterday?

You can chalk this up to co-incidence or destiny, but either way you'd have to admit that its pretty strange.

An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France plane flight that crashed in the Atlantic last week has been killed in a car accident, it has been reported.

Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from Bolzano-Bozen province, had been on holiday in Brazil with her husband Kurt and missed Air France Flight 447 after turning up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31.

All 228 people aboard lost their lives after the plane crashed into the Atlantic four hours into its flight to Paris.

The ANSA news agency reported that the couple had managed to pick up a flight from Rio the following day.

It said that Ms Ganthaler died when their car veered across a road in Kufstein, Austria, and swerved into an oncoming truck. Her husband was seriously injured.

You can look at this, as I said, in two different ways depending on your personal view of the way the world works. I'm pretty stunned by this to be honest as I can't get my head around how you can go from being one of the luckiest people in the world to one of the unluckiest in the space of a few days. It's a little bit mind blowing when you consider the odds of this happening. I guess that is the part of probability that I've always had a problem with, just because something is statistically unlikely doesn't mean it won't happen.

I know the inevitable Final Destination comparisons will be made which may slightly denigrate the tragedy but that is surely human nature and the way we deal with frankly a (at times) terrifying world.