No initial significance

It began with a conversation about the wisdom or otherwise of going for an interest only mortgage – something which concerns my generation in relation to their children’s long term financial security. Reminiscences of how things used to be, when the main worry might be to ensure the mortgage was paid off if daddy died before the family were grown.

Another one of those changes brought about by the astonishing increase in longevity. Although some of us actually have a parent or parents who are still alive, have already received a telegram from the Queen, in our childhood it didn’t seem rare or unusual to think that a man might die in his forties.

We then turned to thinking about people we had known – of our own generation - who nevertheless died untimely in this way.

I had just said that I could, without thinking too much about it, immediately call to mind two former colleagues – one man, one woman – who had died (non-accidentally) aged 45 & 43 respectively, when it suddenly struck me that both had the initials KM.

Now I can do the calculations; if you take the line that the first death sets the bar, this is just proportional to the probability that someone born in 1940s Britain had the initials KM, assuming that the probability of death in the 5th decade of life is independent of name & ignoring the complications of name change on marriage etc, & any bias in my choice of friends or colleagues.

Not long odds.

So why do I find it difficult to shake off this funny feeling about it.

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Time of birth