ON Sunday, eleven-year-old Poppie Roller opted to play at a friend’s house rather than go on a family trip.
It was a decision that saved her life.
For her parents Shane Roller and Shannen Morgan, along with their two younger daughters Lillie and Rubie, died in a head-on collision on the A61 in West Yorkshire, between Wakefield and Barnsley.
I don’t believe in God or a higher being but, for those that do, it’s tempting to think that someone decided it wasn’t Poppie’s time to go.
Or, for non-believers like me, that some thing intervened. Just plain old fate, perhaps?
How Poppie views this catastrophic event in later life remains to be seen, but the experience of others tells us that, beyond expected grief and loss, it could affect her in any number of ways.
The 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center yielded many near-miss stories, not least those of pop star Michael Jackson who had a meeting scheduled on the top floor of one of the towers but overslept, and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane whose hangover made him miss American Airlines Flight 11 — the first hijacked plane to crash in to the North Tower.
Morgan Stanley executive Greer Epstein rarely took breaks, but 20 minutes prior to a fireball going through her office, she opted to descend in the lift for a cigarette that undoubtedly saved her life.
“Everything was about work. I didn’t take vacations. Now I tell people, ‘Don’t put it off. Take your vacation. Take your time with family,” she said afterwards.
A computer scheduling error placed United Airlines flight attendant Elise O’Kane on a flight to Denver instead of her usual Flight 175 on which all her colleagues were killed.
“Why me, out of all those wonderful people? What have I done? I’m not a saint or angel,” she said.
Friends told her “God has a plan for you” and “You were meant to be here”, but she said the weight of expectation made it “the hardest part”.
She felt a need to “give back and fulfil myself” and ended up retraining as a cardiac nurse.
Office worker Rob Herzog switched trains on the way to work and was five minutes late — a delay that saved his life.
But he suffered terrible survivor’s guilt until, one day, he came to the realisation that he’d just been “lucky”.
Whilst artist Daniel Belardinelli should have been on Flight 93 with his uncle but pulled out because of work commitments.
Like Rob, he struggled with survivor’s guilt at first but then just “went on with my life”.
Poppie’s parents would want the same for her, so let’s hope she gets all the help she needs to try and make that possible.
THIS, according to one caption writer, is a “tender embrace” between Donald Trump and wife Melania.
Looks more like a hostage situation to me.
KATY PERRY’S latest single Woman’s World was billed as an anthem of female empowerment but tanked in the charts.
“It’s a woman’s world and you’re lucky to be living in it,” she warbles, whilst the baffling video shows her strutting around in a tiny bikini and looking every inch a male fantasy.
Perhaps it’s ironic – who knows? But either way, she’s reportedly “freaking out” that her forthcoming album might flop too.
She’s currently in Barcelona filming the video for the second single and, if the bondage outfit is anything to go by, it seems lessons have not been learned.
Again, perhaps it’s tongue-in-cheek, but it’s also clichéd, a little bit try-hard and, quite frankly, Gen Z ain’t buying it.
Their brand of feminism is the brooding, lyrically vengeful, I’m-not-taking-any-crap type perfectly executed by the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift – none of whom feel the need to dress like a sex doll to get their message across.
Back in 2008, Katy’s debut single I Kissed A Girl was outlandish.
Today it would be considered tame or, worse, lame.
She’s fast approaching 40 and has a three-year-old daughter with fiancé Orlando Bloom, so perhaps it’s time to stop trying to woo the fickle youth and focus instead on just writing good, relatable songs that everyone wants to hear.
After all, Ed Sheeran is one of the most successful artists in the world – and all he wears is a T-shirt and jeans.
WEST Ham and England star Jarrod Bowen’s dad Sam and brother Harry travelled from Hereford to the Euros in a camper van.
“He’s very tight, my dad, so he doesn’t want to pay for flights,” says 27-year-old Jarrod.
And presumably it meant they saved on hotels too.
My first thought was why didn’t Jarrod use some of his £120k a week salary to treat them to an all-expenses-paid trip?
But then I remembered interviewing Reg Hucknall – dad of Simply Red’s Mick – at his small house in Denton, Manchester, where he was peeling spuds in front of a black and white TV.
“Mick wants to buy me a colour one but I’m happy with this,” he said.
After he died of a heart attack in 2009, Mick said: “I wanted to buy him a house, I wanted to get him a villa in Spain so he could enjoy the sunshine . . . but my dad wouldn’t let me.
“He didn’t want anything from me.”
Except time spent together, of course, which Mick gave him.
So perhaps it’s the same story with Sam Bowen and his trusty camper van.
Good for him.
Given that his son has just proposed to fiancé Dani Dyer, one can’t help but wonder what he feels about the £75,000 engagement ring.
SCIENTISTS at London’s Imperial College have used rodents to test a new drug – dubbed “supermodel granny” – that increased their lifespans and youthful appearance.
Now the burning question is whether it will have the same effect on us?
I’m sure there’s already a waiting list of Hollywood stars willing to be human guinea pigs.
IN the Sussexes’ fictional drama (Netflix docu-series, surely? – Ed), Meghan Markle commented that their televised engagement interview with the BBC had been an “orchestrated reality show”.
At the time, interviewer Mishal Husain responded on Radio 4’s Today with the late Queen’s devastatingly effective riposte of “recollections may vary”, but has now expanded on that in an interview for Saga magazine.
“When the Duchess of Sussex said that . . . I didn’t know what to make of it,” she writes.
“They seemed to have thought through what their new lives would be like and what marriage would mean for her life in particular.
“There was nothing that pointed to what would happen.
“It was two people who were full of joy in each other and life.”
To add insult to injury, Meghan reportedly wanted Sussex cheerleader Oprah Winfrey to conduct the interview and remarked that Mishal “wasn’t empathetic enough, wasn’t warm enough”.
Which we all know actually means, “wasn’t sycophantic enough”.
ONE of the joys of being freelance is that you can take an unpaid day off whenever you like.
So, for example, you can leave the city on a Friday morning to escape the post-work exodus.
Yet when I left “early” to stay with friends in the countryside recently, I hit gridlock traffic almost immediately.
“Who are all these people?” I wailed to a service station attendant.
She replied drily: “They’re all working from home.”
ADVERTISING services of people smuggling will be made a crime under the terms of Labour’s new borders bill.
Begging the question: Why was it considered not a crime for so long?
