Finding a voodoo doll can be slightly disconcerting. Especially if it's a specially crafted voodoo doll and it's lying on your editor's desk.

When Marion's mum sent her a beautiful doll of Marion herself we all fell immediately in love with it. There was this personalised, handmade doll of exquisite detail. She had multi-coloured hair, fish net leggings and her own jewellery, the likeness was quite eerie.

When Marion was taken to hospital and ended up having her appendix out no one thought to question the doll. I mean, voodoo magic is not that uncommon is it? Drinking my morning tea, my eyes turned suspiciously to the doll that was sitting innocently on top of the Collins Thesaurus. Grabbing the mini-Marion doll I pulled up her skirt and checked where her appendix would be. I was convinced I would find a pin or hole there but there was nothing. Relieved, I placed the doll back on her perch and returned to work. You can't be too careful when it comes to voodoo.

(I would just like to take a moment to apologise to Marion's mum about harbouring such thoughts about her beautiful doll but it's better to be safe than sorry. What if someone had dropped the doll in the office shredder?)

The symbol for planet Neptune appeared in Jemma's lunch. We always believe in coincidence.

Jemma was sitting at her desk today having lunch while I was finishing up an article about poltergeists. She doubted that her bacon, avocado and chicken sandwich had much avocado in it, so she opened it up. A few seconds later she said, “The symbol for Neptune is in my sandwich.”

Well you don’t say that sentence every day, I thought, but before I could say anything she was holding her Neptune sandwich under my nose. It was indeed the symbol for Neptune formed with bacon and avocado. She took a big bite out of it.

It’s curious symbolism, eating Neptune. Neptune is the planet of inspiration, poetry and beauty but it's also linked to impracticality and a lack of commonsense.

Interesting that since lunch Jemma’s had loads of good ideas for the website - none of them workable.

We’re going to keep a close eye on her lunch for the rest of the week.

The songs that never fail to cheer us up

For months we’ve been toying with the idea of a Prediction jukebox. The same tunes just keep infiltrating our minds. They do tend to have a prediction-ey theme, such as Age of Aquarius or Moon Shadow. But none of us remember why we sing Jolene by Dolly Parton, but we do, irritatingly often, as our long-suffering colleagues will testify. But this song is my current favourite. It always brings me back down to Earth…

GALAXY SONG by Monty Python

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
,
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,

That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,

A sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see

Are moving at a million miles a day

In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,

Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.

It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.

It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,

But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.

We go 'round every two hundred million years,

And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions

In this amazing and expanding universe.



The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding

In all of the directions it can whizz

As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,

Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,

How amazingly unlikely is your birth,

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,

'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Any more ideas for the Prediction jukebox? We're working on a list then we're going to you-tube it, or something....

Making your own talisman is a powerful, personal way to draw love, wealth or health into your life... but there are a few risks involved!

We had a lot of fun making our own Prediction love talisman in the June issue. We started by trawling the shops and raiding our homes for talisman-making equipment and came back with all sorts of ribbons, beads, crystals, symbols and feathers to get us started. One of the best bits of working for the magazine is getting to test out all the features while we are putting them together and we always learn something new.

Making the talisman as great but it wasn't as easy as it looks - when we performed the ritual to imbue the talisman with love energy we had to burn a piece of paper to finish it. The problem was we couldn't put it out and I nearly burnt my hand off! Who says working for a magazine is a safe profession? It's definitely not when magic is involved so if you attempt the ritual yourself make sure you have a fireproof dish and some water to hand. Read the full feature to find out how to make your personal talisman for love, wealth or health.

Colour therapy is really powerful. By simply adding some yellow shelves to a dull grey office can give you a boost and cheer up everyone around you.

Some people scoff at the idea of colour therapy and laugh when I explain how much colours affect my life. They find it odd that going to work in an orange striped t-shirt or a grey cardigan can determine what kind of day I have - but it's true! Colour influences me almost as much as the weather, when it's sunny I literally skip down the road, ready to take on anything and everything but sadly I have no control over the seasons.

I have real issues about our office, which is decked out in a depressing shade of concrete grey. Recently I've added a bright yellow shelving system on my desk and a glorious yellow sombrero on my head to get my creative juices flowing. I feel so much better and the sombrero seems to have cheered up my colleagues as well. It's amazing how something as simple as colour can really impact on your mood.

UFO sightings and theories have suddenly come back into fashion after the MOD released secret files...

Aliens from outer space could have been visiting us for years! The Ministry of Defence has released archives going back to 1978, detailing hundreds of unexplained sightings in British skies. The MOD files show that UFOs come in all shapes and sizes. Any aliens spotted were usually green.

This reminded me of something very strange that happened to me when I was eleven. I was walking home from school with my little sister and our neighbour. It was about four in the afternoon on a sunny day when we saw an amazing object in the sky. The three of us stood on a little railway bridge staring in wonder at the giant shimmering circle of twinkly red lights in the sky. We knew it wasn't the Sun - because that was in another part of the sky. Although it was stationery, the thing seemed to have ocean-like red waves. We must have stood there for at least twenty minutes.

The strangest thing of all about this story was that all three of us forgot all about what had happened until weeks later. We hadn't spoken about it to each other, our parents or anyone else, until one of us (can't remember who) said "Hey, what about that huge sun-like thing the other day!?" We were all baffled as to why we hadn't mentioned it or apparently even thought about until weeks later.

I joked that maybe we had been abducted or brainwashed by beings from another world, but now I'm the editor of Prediction, I'm thinking. "hmm, maybe not such a far-fetched idea?" Even now I think it was one of the most astonishing things I've ever seen.

Are there two of you.. one thinking and one watching yourself think?

When I was at yoga a couple of days ago, we were doing some relaxation exercises to wind us down after our stretches. "Just watch as your thoughts go by", said yoga teacher lady, intending this to be a calming exercise. And somehow we know how to do this, to watch your thoughts go by without getting too involved with them. See them, but don't get into them, watch them float past your mind.

But if you think about it, if you can watch your thoughts, then there has to be two of you right? One of you thinking the thoughts, and another watching you thinking them. The more I thought about this the more interesting it became, probably not the effect the yoga teacher had intended...

Lucid dreaming is when you realise you're dreaming and can do anything you want... fly, travel through time or meet your spirit guides!

A lucid dream happens when you 'wake up' in a dream and realise you're dreaming. It's a wonderful feeling because you can then dream about anything you want. You can also do things like ask for your spirit guides to appear, then ask them questions and they can answer, and because you're lucid, you'll remember what they said the next day.

How do you become lucid? Here's our trusted Prediction trick. Draw the letter 'd' (for 'dreaming) somewhere on your hand in the morning. Then for the rest of the day, every time you look at it, say to yourself, "Am I dreaming?" Obviously the answer will be 'no.' But keep doing this throughout the day.

The idea is that when you do eventually go to sleep and have a dream that your mind will cast over the day's events and, because it was a break from your usual routine, will pick up on the hand-looking stuff, you'll remember asking yourself, "Am I dreaming?", but when you think of this question in your dream, you'll be able to say, "Yes, I am dreaming!". The realisation that you are dreaming, will actually wake you up a bit, hopefully, to enjoy a lucid dream.

Give it a go and let us know how you get on. What have your experiences of lucid dreams been like? We'd love to know - share them here!