Comment 5 for bug 1492919

Here is some good information on how to avoid deadlocks in mysql: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/innodb-deadlocks.html

One of the more interesting points is
* Always be prepared to re-issue a transaction if it fails due to deadlock. Deadlocks are not dangerous. Just try again

And at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2596005/working-around-mysql-error-deadlock-found-when-trying-to-get-lock-try-restarti it mentions
 "Often you can just put a try/catch around the query execution logic and look for a deadlock when errors occur. If you catch one, the normal thing to do is just attempt to execute the failed query again."

So we could try that for a start