He had no idea why or how it had happened to him.
He hadn’t asked for it; not any of it. The day it started he was tilling soil in his back garden. A fairly insignificant activity, you would suppose. He was doing the final rake over, just to leave it looking nice while giving himself time to think about what he would plant there, when he felt the vibration. At first, he had the nonsensical thought that he’d hit something electrical, despite the fact that the rakes handle was made of wood. He dropped it anyway. It was then that he realised that it was the ground beneath his feet that was shuddering. It only lasted a minute or two before stopping abruptly. This incident left him feeling a little strange, so he gathered up his garden tools, put them back in the shed, then went back in to make himself a cup of tea.
That’s how it started. What followed was undeniably astonishing, but not necessarily a good thing. In a way he was glad he lived on his own and didn’t have to share the events that occurred over the following days. To put it simply, he found that he was suddenly in possession of a couple of super human powers. After a brief period of denial, he slowly allowed himself to put these newly acquired abilities to the test. He did this by going out of his way to pay attention to the news and weather forecasts, together with getting out and talking to people. In this way he confirmed for himself that he was, in fact, both a seer and a telepathist.
A seer or fortune teller because he had woken up with the strong feeling that he knew the name of the previous evening’s unlikely winner of the World Championships Snooker final. This was despite the fact that he had never followed the sport and knew very little about the game. He only had a name in his head. A trip to the newsagents had settled that. A telepathist or mind reader because while buying the newspaper he had disturbed the shop owner’s peace of mind by asking him whether he had decided to plant Nasturtiums or Sweet Alyssums along the border in his back garden. He never received an answer owing to the fact that he had left the man in a state of shock.
As it turns out he was a quiet person, a widower and retired botanist, and all he ever wanted was a quiet life. He also had the good sense to know what a ghastly burden these new powers could easily become. He quickly made plans.
The first thing was to purchase the winning ticket in the giant super lottery, then to put his house on the market, to have his winnings transferred to a Swiss bank, to book a flight to Martinique, sometimes referred to as ‘the island of flowers’, to book into a hotel and look for a suitable property, an finally… to keep quiet about it.