COINCIDENCE

We were on holiday in the Lake District. Having a walk around by the boats in Keswick. Just stopped to admire the view and chap stood came and stood beside us and addressed my husband by his first name. He worked with my husband but in a different building. He was on holiday there too.

We took our boys to Beamish museum once. Went into the school room and a neighbour, her husband, and two sons were in there at the same time. They lived in Coventry and were there on holiday.

As a child, on holiday in Christchurch, Hampshire we went to the post office. Got in the queue. The person who joined us in the queue was someone who lived a street away from us in Bristol

We went to St Agnes in the Scilly Isles one summer. We had rented a tiny one bedroom bungalow that belonged to a B&B. We were sitting outside on the first day and lo and behold there were a couple from our home town whom we knew well, as we played music with them. Not only had we picked the same week on the same island, but it turned out that they had booked our bungalow, but the owners finished up double booking by mistake, so they were being accommodated in the attached B&B!

Thankyou all so much for sharing your experiences.
Its made amazing reading and really given me pause for thought.
In particular,I think Skweek1 and Theoddbird have a point and there is so much more to this wonderful life than we can ever know.

I have just been speaking to my daughter who was telling me about visiting a customer this afternoon called Mrs Waspe. As she was driving away afterwards guess what landed on her steering wheel? Yes, a wasp

30 odd years ago I got a job that entailed me travelling to a town 300 miles away for training.On my first night there I had dinner with the young man who was to be my assistant manager.We talked about where he came from and he mentioned an area I knew as my dad grew up there so I asked what his family name was in case my dad knew them.He told me and I was quite surprised as it was my family surname too.So I asked what his mothers name was and he told me that and that her Dad was A ,D......,that was also My dad s name and the young man was my cousin that I'd never met as his family had moved before I was born.I immediately called Dad and he spoke to the guy and confirmed he was indeed who I thought he was and got his mothers address to get back in touch.After 30 years of not seeing them it seemed a huge coincidence that we both went to the same interviews and both got jobs in the same place that meant we would work together.We still keep in touch now ,mainly by e-mail and FB

My father was a POW who managed to escape from his captors by jumping from a moving train whilst being transported from Italy to Germany. After living rough for a while he met and was helped by a young farmer and his pregnant wife. They were afraid to take him home as the risk was so great, but the gave him food and drink and indicated that he should head for the mountains.
Eventually he came to an isolated farm and the farmer and his family took him in and hid him for several months. In that time he fell in love with their daughter and after the war they married.
Fast forward 30 years and my now widowed grandmother moved from the farm into retirement. Sitting on a bench in a park one day she is joined by an elderly gentleman and they make polite conversation.
It turned out that he was the young man who had first helped my father! Funny old world isn't it?

A few years ago my ex and I, along with two friends went to Whitby for a weekend. As we were tramping up to the abbey overlooking the town we met my best friend with a couple of her friends coming down! None if us knew the others were going to the same place.

On a camping holiday in remote West Wales, went to the toilet block last thing at night. There was another lady waiting, who I recognised. We had met her at a dinner party on a military base when we were posted to Cyprus; she was on holiday there staying with some friends of ours. Another time we were in a cafe on the Lizard in Cornwall, and noticed the people on the next table looking at us. Turned out to be a couple we knew from when we were living in Singapore.

So many wonderful stories. We've had some very strange coincidences over the years. A few weeks ago I was on a train and sat opposite a man at a table. I never speak to strangers normally however for some reason that day I spoke to him. He told me he'd taken an earlier train than he should have and then said where he'd come from - the town we left nearly 40 years ago. He asked where I'd lived and when I told him the road he asked what number - turned out he'd bought my parents hotel a couple of years after they sold it! He spent the rest of the journey drawing diagrams on a newspaper of the way he'd turned it into apartments.

Many years ago my husband was on the road a lot and on the motorway one evening in thick fog when he saw a man walking down the hard shoulder with a petrol can. Typical of him he stopped and asked if he needed a lift - the man was totally disorientated and couldn't remember where he'd left his car. Knowing the area well my husband managed to pinpoint where it would be and got him back to his car before heading home. Several weeks later my dad was playing golf with someone who recounted this tale of the good samaritan who'd rescued him on the motorway! He was dumfounded when dad told him that was his SIL!

As my son was doing his DoE gold, tramping up a hill in the Lake District, he met his cousin coming down. But his cousin lives in New Zealand !

We were moving from one town to another, about 20 miles away. DD who was only 9 didn't want to move and was upset in class. Her teacher asked what the matter was and DD told her. Teacher asked where she was moving to and DD told her. 'I used to live there' said teacher. 'What road' - DD tells her. 'I lived in that road, what number'? DD tells her. 'That is my old house'. We couldn't believe it but it was absolutely true. She could tell DD about the park nearby, the ice rink and swimming pool and how much she enjoyed living there. We spend 24 very happy years there.

On a visit to Cambridge I met a small group of prospective students, including a young English man who I chatted to but we didn't keep in touch. We met again by chance a couple of months later at a conference in Finland and then a few months later I went to Glasgow and bumped into the same chap in Sauchiehall Street. I never did find out his name.

I find coincidences fascinating and have enjoyed reading these posts. I am reminded that I once heard a statistician say that a world without coincidences would be truly extraordinary. They are bound to happen - and we remember and remark on the coincidences which are meaningful to us, and forget others which don't seem to have significance for us. However, I cannot quite abandon the thought that they may have meaning. Jung famously thought there were no coincidences and wrote about synchronicity.

Years ago, before wheelie bins, we had a plastic dustbin with a separate lid. During a storm the lid blew away. About two years later during another storm the lid blew back and landed on the bin. I can only think it was stuck in a tree all that time but I couldn't believe it found it's way back to it's exact spot.

Just remembered something else. My friend's son was standing at a bus stop in Australia. The person standing beside him asked if he'd gone to Belfast Tech. He had, and they had been in the same class. They'd both gone travelling and met at a bus stop.

Think of all the times that you went on holiday, or stood in a queue in the post office, or climbed a mountain and didn’t bump into somebody that you knew though.?
We only notice the odd moments that stand out, although I really like the two tortoises story and the dustbin lid that blew back onto it’s own bin.?

Years ago, whilst exploring the Catacombs in Rome, I thought I heard the voice of a teacher, who had previously worked in my school. I thought I was hallucinating when I heard her very distinctive voice echoing through the tunnel. On turning a corner, there she was in all her glory..
A couple of years later, whilst on holiday in Salamanca, Spain, on coming downstairs in the hotel, I heard this very same voice again. As I peered over the banister, there she was again!

In my student days I was staying in a youth hostel abroad and chatted to some girls who told me where they were from in England. I said that one of the boys from my primary school friendship group had moved there when we left primary school and I wondered if they knew him, I never heard from him after we left primary school. It turned out that they had never met this boy where they lived but had met him on a ferry during their holiday.

A few years ago I was telling a work colleague about a 1970s song I had always liked and which I hadn't heard for years. She had never heard of it, as she was much younger than I was. At lunchtime we decided we would go to Debenhams for a browse. I could not believe it, they were playing "my song". If that wasn't enough, when I got home that evening... "my song" was being played on the radio!! How weird is that!!

We were on a boat trip on a lake in China when we got talking to a couple from London. When we told them where we lived they said they'd been recently staying with friends who'd bought a house in a place about twenty miles from our home. It turned out to be a house I had designed!

I agree with whoever said that a lack of coincidences would be even more extraordinary. Once I started to think about it I could remember several. By the time we get to our age, so many things have happened, mostly unremarkable, but some which do seem diiferent. Why not?

One year we were on holiday in Ibiza. On the first day we went for a walk and my DH said "Here come next door". As he had been happily chatting to the couple in the next room I thought he meant them but no it was neighbours from home on their last day. We knew they were away but had no idea where they had gone.

For our silver wedding we went to San Francisco and then on to Yosemite National Park. On the last night we stayed at a motel about 30 miles from San Francisco. In the morning I went to the reception to pick up coffee and pastries as is the norm and the owner had overslept. I started to talk to another lady while we waited. As we walked back together my husband and her husband were chatting by the cars outside our rooms. Her husband said "You will never guess what but P........ works at the same company in Stevenage and they are here on their Silver Wedding anniversary just the same as us. Mind you he was a manager and they had been there for 3 weeks while we had crammed so much into 10 days.

I went to school in Berlin in the early 70's. I had 3 really good friends, two of who I lost touch with when I left in 73.
One I remained a penpal with. At this point I lived on The East Coast of Scotland and she in Wales. I had three children at school. One of DD2's friends family went to Manchester for a wedding, and lo and behold my friend from Berlin was at the same wedding.
A small world indeed.

20 miles away from home this afternoon we stopped for tea ,as we walked into the Tea shop a woman asked are you G ...the photographer,you took my sisters wedding photos 30 years ago ....at that the woman behind the counter joined in..you did mine 18 years ago and you haven't changed a bit....lolWhats the odds of two out of three people in a shop so far from home both being clients ...and both remembering you after all that time ?

I sat next to a lady on the bus and got chatting. We both lived in Thanet, we both had one grandson, we were both sixty, we were both retiring, we were both born in December. We were both allergic to cats and while we were wondering how amazing all this was we discovered that we both married in September 1976. When she got of the bus I wanted to call her back I felt such a connection to her.