Coincidences

My Dad used to travel a lot and one day he picked up a hitchhiker just outside London the man was heading to the Midlands. They chatted for a couple of hours then as they approached the Midlands my Dad asked whereabouts he was going the man replied Stafford. That was a coincidence as my Dad was headed there too, on further questioning it turned out he was the son of our next door-but-one neighbour !

We were in North Wales on holiday, hundreds of miles from home. We went in to the hotel restaurant and there was only one other couple sitting there. The waitress said she would seat us together as we must know one another. We didn't. It turned out they lived just round the corner from us. The waitress couldn't understand how it was possible that we had never met. We also bumped into our next door neighbours in France, they had been staying further South than us and were making their way home when we both ended up in the same small village for lunch.

We were travelling back to Gatwick airport from a holiday in Italy quite late at night. As we flew over the Kent coastline I remarked to my husband that Jeremy and Christine were no doubt fast asleep down there. On arrival in the queue for passport control just happened to turn round and found that the couple immediately behind us were our friends J and C.

I was on a private boat on Sydney Harbour with about 12 people - some had never met before. Turns out that three of us were born in the same hospital in Liverpool.

Over forty years ago, whilst pregnant, was reading a book about an animal rescue centre in the South West. Went into hospital to have my baby and met a girl, who’d just had her baby. We got talking and I mentioned the book I’d been reading and said how good it was. She told me it was her family that had set up the animal rescue centre. I was dumbfounded. Another coincidence was when me and husband were on holiday in Scotland and had gone to the Glencoe visitors centre. As we pulled into the car park we were greeted by two couples who worked with my husband, they didn’t know he was going to Scotland on holiday! Again dumbfounded at the coincidence

In a Madrid hotel we got talking to the couple at the next table. I remarked that their accents reminded me of my parents; eventually it turned out they were living in my maternal granny’s old house!

I went on a training course with a young man I'd never met 350 miles from home .On the first night we sat at the bar and chatted about where we came from .Turned out he was my Dads cousins son, dad was named after his mothers dad they had lost touch many years before ,we were on the phone to our respective parents instantly and they to each other as soon as we hung up.Happy coincidence .

We went to the Peterborough doll show the other week
There were 100s in the que to get in and we had driven up from Kent ..
Got talking to a lady and her daughter in the que they had driven from Suffolk.
I admired the daughters reborn baby doll in the stroller ! Few minutes later chatting and we realised she had bought the Doona Stroller from my eldest daughter two weeks before.
We couldn't believe all that way and we stood next to each other in that long que ... amazing ?

New neighbours moved into the bungalow opposite our's earlier this year......when introducing ourselves and chatting, seems they regularly holiday in the same village in Cyprus that we lived in for 5 years till 2012 and were due back there the same weeks as us in June this year. Very odd meeting your new neighbours from Wales for lunch in a Cypriot village! Nice enough couple, too!

We live in South Wales, though I'm originally from Scotland. We went on a break to Portmeirion, North Wales. Sat at breakfast and got chatting to couple at next table. They were from the town next to the small village where we lived. They knew the people who live in our former house and who we sold the house to over 25 years ago.
And couple of years ago we went for lunch on the Northern Belle, leaving from Cardiff. Got chatting to couple across the aisle who were from Oxford. Turned out his best friend in Oxford was an ex boyfriend of mine from when I still lived in Scotland.
So it is indeed a very small world.

I was at my mother in law's funeral on Monday (West Midlands) . The minister that conducted the service had a northern accent so after the service I asked him where he was from and it turned out that he was a minister at the church connected to my son's school and must have been there when son was there (20 years ago)!! Afterwards when chatting to my son we decided that he did look vaguely familiar!

I don't have any remarkable coincidences to tell you - I just wanted to say how amazing all of yours were and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them.

A few years ago, I was living in a small village in Spain, was chatting to somebody I'd known for over a year, she mentioned where she was from in the uk, I said my brother lives there, is ENT surgeon, oh, is it X and added that he'd operated on her throat 15 years ago!

A tall rastafarian with dreadlocks sat on the empty train seat next to me. I remarked on his south London accent and it turned out that although much younger than me he had grown up in my neighbourhood. We had a good old chinwag and it seems that his dad was a Battersea boy as was mine. His mum was born in Guyana and married a London lad. I wish the journey had been longer as we had so much in common.

We went on a carribean cruise for our honeymoon. Someone at our table said they had met another couple from our home town on board. It was someone dh had been at school with. (Not a friend just in the same year group)

We lived outside Jo'burg next to a woman of a similar age. One day over the fence, for whatever reason, started to talk about our fathers and what they did and where they worked. Amazingly, it seems in the same place {Marylebone Station}. Turns out her dad and my dad worked in almost adjacent offices on the same floor and had known each other for decades.

This is so weird, I still can't believed it happened.

I was visiting Hadrian's Wall, it started to rain so, on impulse, I ducked into an English Heritage property... where the Curator immediately recognised me from 30 years earlier when we were neighbours.

She left following a particularly ghastly divorce... and said she often wished she could get in touch with her former next door neighbour... to tell him how much his support had meant at the time.

The following week, I had returned home to Northants, and attended an historical lecture at Northampton Guildhall.

We had coffee before beginning, and I sat down, at random, next to a guy I'd never met... and who turned out to be... yes, you've guessed it... the missing neighbour.

When my children were small we went on a Eurocamp holiday in France from our home in Scotland. In the tent next to us was a family from Dublin with the same surname, and two sons the same age as ours with the same first names

My son in law is a Paramedic, and he has saved plenty of lives over the years! Anyway, we were all going to Blackpool for a family holiday when our car broke down ten miles away from the campsite we were due to be staying at, and the breakdown guy who turned up turned out to be a man whose life my sil had saved ten years previously...(think he had been in a car accident!) needless to say he got the minivan up and running and said he would happily pay for it all himself.
Small small world! x

We were on holiday and talking to a couple that said they came from a small village in Oxford we replied we also used to live their and in the same road and it turned out the same house! Small world.

When we went on a holiday to India in 1991, there was a young couple from our area. It turned out that our DD was covering for her holiday break in the bank where they both worked. In the same group there was the mother of the hairdresser of a close friend, and a man who ran the hardware/ wood shop in our town. Not sure if these count as coincidences, but it was strange in quite a biggish group.

We have American friends about to arrive to stay with us for a month. When I first met them in Denver , 25 years ago, she said ‘I only know one person in England’. You guessed it, she was in my babysitting circle.

I got on the local train last year in a rush as I was late and sat opposite a man who was on the phone. He mentioned my home town in his conversation and I couldn't resist asking him if that was where he was from when he'd finished (I don't normally talk to strange men on trains!). It turned out not only was he from there but he had bought my parents old hotel which he had turned into flats. He then proceeded to draw the plans on his newspaper showing how he'd done it. He'd also owned one of the local fish shops - my parents had had a fish shop when I was a child! The weird thing was he shouldn't have even been on that train as he'd missed the earlier one. We were so deep in conversation we nearly missed my stop

I live in the north of Scotland.
On holiday in the middle of England, stopped at motorway services, I got out of the car and saw my boss.

Sitting waiting while DH climbed a tower in India, I got into conversation with a chap who asked where I came from.

I told him the name of the nearest large town. He said he had been nearby the previous week in the small town where I live for a college reunion. I asked if it had been arranged by R* P****. Yes, he replied.
She is my best friend.