Coincidences

Our daughter lives in Melbourne but approx 10 years ago when she was living in Sydney she went to a small chemist for some throat lozenges. The Australian chemist asked her if she was from Manchester as he thought he could detect an accent. She said she wasn’t but was from Leeds to which the chemist said his mother in law was too. It only turned out after more chatting that his mother in law lives 5 doors away from us!

That is a coincidence. Many many years ago we were sitting in the foyer of a hotel in New York waiting for a taxi to the airport and got chatting to another couple sitting with us. It turned out that the following week they were moving into the house next door to my aunt and uncle in Chesham.

DD1 had a day off from her holiday job for a trip to Bournemouth. Who should she see there but her boss, with a man who wasn't her husband, who had phoned in to work sick! She pretended not to have seen her and never mentioned it to anyone.

We were in holiday in Australia and when checking into a hotel in Noosa Head another receptionist came out and said I recognise those accents (West Country!) She said she hailed from a village outside of ........... to which DH replied that’s where I grew up. It turns out they were next door neighbours for years and although he was a few years older than her both sets of parents were very good friends and DH’s parents would on occasion babysit her ! What are the chances of that! The same holiday we were in a cafe, way off the beaten track, when a man asked where we came from. We said he wouldn’t know the area and gave him the nearest city. Only turns out he comes to our town every year (house swap) to watch the cricket and does in fact know it very well! Small world indeed!

We were on holiday in Thailand and did a kayaking day trip. On the bus we got talking to a young couple. Turned out they lived a couple of minutes walk from us in Berkshire.

I was on a group holiday in Puglia, Italy and the first evening there discovered that another person who lived in London had been born in the same maternity hospital in South West Wales as me but I was the eldest by six weeks. She had also been brought up in the same town in Wales, about 20 miles away from the hospital, until moving as a small child. We became friends and remain friendly, I go to visit her in London at least once a year. She is very interested in genealogy and I have been able to help her with old place names etc. We then found out the my cousin's husband is a distant relative of hers.
Another time my cousin and I were in Paddy's Market in Sydney where we entered an off licence to get some wine. The young man asked us what part of Wales we were from and when we answered we discovered that his mother was from our town and he had visited a few times to stay with his grandmother. Although we did not know his mother, he rung her up and we had a conversation in Welsh on the phone. If we had n't been departing on a cruise the following day we would have met with her.

we were on holiday quite a few years ago in Vilamoura Portugal,and I happened to go into the post-office,and my friends mother was in the same queue,then low and behold we were in Ibiza,and met her again buying ice_cream,and yet again at Airport in Malta,it was so weird,,,the only explanation was that we tended to go the same week,but we never said where we were go ing,just coincidence,doesn't happen now though ,as she is no longer able to get off to places,and we can choose anytime now.

While visiting my son for a holiday in New Zealand we stopped at a lovely lake. My son went to buy tea and cake at the nearby teashop while I sat a table for 4 outside. A young man came up and asked if he could sit with me as the other tables were full. We got chatting and it turned out that he was a doctor and had worked with my son in Bournemouth Hospital some years before, When my son came back they recognised each other and had a good old chinwag

Another time my husband and I were in Versailles, near Paris, and we bumped into a lady from the same little village as we lived in in Dorset.

Another time we were staying in Cyprus and were visiting the Land of the Kings, and a coach drew up near us and out got a lady I recognised from my work in Dorset.

Both times none of us knew that the other would be going abroad.

19 year old daughter meets cute guy in nightclub in Central London. Time passes, daughter becomes pregnant by this “cute guy”. Time passes.Phone call one evening;”mum, do you know a lady by the name of....?”
Said “cute guy” turns out to be the step nephew of a dear colleague i’ve worked with for years!
Small world!
Ps Baby born six weeks ago...

Not as good as all of yours but years ago I moved into a house that an elderly gentleman used to live in. He had to move to sheltered accommodation as his wife has died & he couldn't manage on his own. He used to stand outside the gate looking up (& shut the gate if I'd left it open!) If I saw Jim looking I would duck out of the way as I felt guilty, like I'd taken his house from him!
Fast forward about 15 years & we had a new admission in the nursing home I worked in on my floor. It turned out to be my "old man" Alan from all those years ago. He was quite poorly & wasn't going home aga in so I made it my mission to make sure I was his care giver whenever I was on shift. I felt like it was the least I could do.

Went to Portugal with my (now) ex husband and made friends with a young newly married couple. After the holiday we parted ways and that was it.

The following year we spent a week on the Thames on a houseboat and stopped for supplies in a very small town with one supermarket and bumped into the wife of the couple we'd met in Portugal who was staying with family while her husband was away with the army.

The next Summer we were in Wiltshire at an airshow and her husband was there giving a demonstration with his army unit.

Also, in the 80s when I lived in Germany I became friendly with another Brit, who it turned out had worked at the registry office I got married in back in the UK.

It's a small world isn't it?

My daughter was planning her wedding 5 years ago. She lives in Victoria BC and we live 600 km north in a small town.

She and her fiancé decided to find a Justice of the Peace (or marriage commissioner) and randomly chose one from the phone book. On their first meeting with the JP, he commented on my daughter's last name D--- and asked where she was from. Stating her home town, he asked if she had known Wilf D---

It turned out that was my husband's deceased father, who passed away while my DH was just a child in the early 1970's. The JP and Wilf had worked together and in fact the JP has purchased the family business after my hubby's father died.

My daughter took this as a sign from beyond that her departed grandfather approved of the wedding.

When my husband and I went on honeymoon to Jersey, walking through St Helier he said hello to someone as we went passed - I asked who was it, a milkman from our village. Unfortunately my husband has passed away many years ago. I went to Weston super Mare on holiday a few years ago with an old friend (we met in school), my Dad and his partner - started talking to a couple who asked where we from, I said the name of the nearest city as no-one would have heard of the village where I live - they said oh we have friends in P..... - the village I live in!!

On the way to Sicily one year, we changed aircraft in Pisa (just a small hut and runway then) I stopped to help an elderly couple on their first flight while DH went ahead to arrange paperwork.
As we got into the hut, there was DH hugging a glamorous young woman (legs up to armpits etc). It turned out to be his ex next door neighbour and I was with her parents, who were on their way to visit her as she was living just outside Pisa.

Thankyou for dear husband ,in aus dh stands for dickhead who would have thought

Many years ago I'd been working flat out and found about 10 days clear in my diary, so on a whim took myself off to Portugal. On the flight out there I sat down when 2 women travelling together had been given seats not together - I offered to swap seats so they could be next to each other and they proceeded to ply me with drinks for the duration of the flight - both had attended the same school as me about 30 years before me. Then, after saying goodbye to them and getting on the coach to the hotel a woman sat next to me - turned out she was my then-boyfriend's next door neighbour.

My late husband and I were in a lift in Toronto when my husband clutched my arm and said that the man in the lift with us was his land lord when he studied in Brighton over forty year's ago. It turned out that he was visiting his son who lived in Toronto.

For many years we lived in St. Columb Major, a tiny, Cornish town and Mum moved from Yorkshire to join us.

Years later when I came back to NZ she stayed, wanting me to settle first. However, she came out for a holiday.
I took her all over the country including to a big hotel where there was a traditional Maori concert and feast, popular with tourists.
We sat opposite an American couple in their 60's who, after 'doing' NZ were flying to the UK to look up his ancestry, 'In a place you've never heard of, St Columb Major.'

I have a friend of 20+ years who lives 500km from me. She worked with, and heartily disliked a woman colleague with a very unusual surname.

About a year ago, my regular home-care lady had an accident and the agency replaced her.
During the next few months, the new lady and I chatted and she told me she used to be married to a very abusive man and gave his surname.
When I remarked that I knew of someone with the same name only they lived a 6 hour drive away, she said, 'Yep, that's his mother.'

And I have lost count of the hundreds of times I've been online with an audio book playing in the background when the narrators says an (often unusual or obscure) phrase as I'm reading it on my screen.

Peter White (BBC 4) once did a programme on exactly this.

We were moving house when my DD was 9. It meant a change of school and being away from her friends. She was upset in school and when her teacher asked what was wrong, she told her about moving and her teacher asked where she was moving to. When DD told her the town she said I used to live there. Which road? She said I used to live in that road. What number? It was the house she had lived with her parents. Her teacher was able to tell her about the brilliant park very close by and the school, which she had attended. The people we bought from had bought it from her parents.