" Is it you?"

In the 1950s people often hitchhiked. My very friendly dad always picked students up.

One day he picked up 2 Australian young men. They started chatting about Australia and my father said ‘I have a favourite Australian artist who paints fabulous landscapes’. One of the young men asked who it was and when Dad told him the artist’s name the young man replied ‘That’s my dad’!

Before leaving the Oxford college I used to work in to have our daughter, I was introduced to a friend of the College Chaplain. She was a Seychellois, and had lived in our bungalow in Mahe, where we had lived for two years. When they were out one night it had been destroyed by a large rock which had come down the hill side and right through the bungalow in torrential rain. When we lived there a huge rock was embedded in the back of the bungalow!

I used to have a salon, a client had been coming in for quite a long time, I was polite and we had little chats before she went off for treatment.
Her therapist was away on holiday so I stepped in one day, we obviously exchanged a few more details. She asked if I had always lived in the area and I told her that I grew up in HK.

Normally people just say ‘ oh was that interesting’. End of conversation, she asked if I went to school there. When I said yes she named a couple. By now we are really looking at each other- we are almost the same age. I knew her as Mrs .X so I asked her maiden name, as soon as she said it I exclaimed goodness X you haven’t changed a bit! I bet we walk past people we used to know all the time.

A teaching colleague told a horrific story in the staff room one September about her summer holiday. She'd been relaxing on the beach, topless, only to hear the dulcet tones of a student in her form class. 'Hello Miss X!'

Not a coincidence that she started getting referred to as 'Miss Nipples' by the kids at school.

We were in our fifties when we joined a local sailing club and I was chatting to one of the members and he said he'd been at the same new secondary school as me at the same time. I found it strange that I couldn't remember him (schools were smaller back then) until he moved behind me and said in a strict voice "What are you doing in here? Shouldn't you be outside?" And all the hair stood up on the back of my neck. He was a teacher! Twelve years older than me, the age difference had seemed huge then.

We were travelling around Europe with the 3 eldest children when they were young. They were a bit tetchy so we stopped at a cafe in the Swiss mountains. Working on the basis that no-one we knew would be there, I let them rampage around the neadow outside.

So why, did someone come up to DH and say 'Hello, Dr Lester, fancy seeing you here!'

When I was about 22 I was having coffee with a friend. I was approached by a man in his late 30s. He asked me if I had lived in a certain inner city area. I was curious and answered yes I had but moved with my family in the 1960s.
He then went on to name my family what street and house we lived in. He told me his family name they were neighbours of ours apparently. I asked how he could possibly know me I was a little girl? His reply was it's your hair love it's still the same a bundle of lovely red curls!
I went home and told my dad about the encounter and he rattled off all the family members names. I still haven't forgotten that totally out the blue meeting.

Back in 1976, whilst camping near St. Tropez, an old university friend of my DH's joined us in the site bar, leading to a very convivial evening.

On a caravanning holiday in the South of France in 1990, we chanced upon an ex colleague of mine from a few years earlier. She was staying with hr family on the same site.

We were enjoying coffee outside a bar in a French city in 2005 when DH spotted a colleague from a firm for which he had worked briefly in 1974! A few drinks later, we were still reminiscing!

I have another teaching colleague co-incidence to tell.

DH and I were staying in the Royal Scots College in Rome. I was standing at the top of the spiral staircase, when I could hear a familiar voice.
I leant over and there was the most annoying temp teacher we ever had. She had just arrived with her family.
Her two sons were not allowed snacks nor sweets and spent their whole time cadging treats and fizzy drinks from other guests. One son was violently sick over his bed one night after being particularly greedy he demolished the communal tin of Quality Street.
The following morning we were subjected to a tirade for indulging her children.
She had been resting in her room, leaving us to look after her children, while they pestered the guests and helped themselves to our snacks.

The following year, we were on a tour of the Catacombs, when I heard her voice again. DH said that I had a look of absolute horror and disbelief on my face.

I was on a tourist boat on a lake in China and got chatting to an English couple. When they asked where we lived, it turned out we had mutual friends.

Two of my friends actually bumped into each other in New Zealand. Neither knew the other was there.

I met a young man in Oxford, then three months later met him again at a conference in Finland and a few months after that literally bumped into the same chap by chance in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow.

On a flight from Sydney to Perth was one of Mum’s school gate friends from mainland Europe who recognised me (very surprised as I was a sobbing soggy mess after leaving family at the airport)

On holiday in Minorca and DH saw one of his friends whilst we were having dinner.

On returning from a ski trip (we drove) DD whilst riding (horse) recognised a car and on speaking to the man they were in our resort and same stopover.

DD was on school ski trip in Switzerland and on the train up the mountain heard her name being called and it was the Chalet Host from our Christmas ski trip three months before.

I had a rather awkward blind date for the end of year college formal.He ignored me most of the night as his ex was also at the dance. He had arranged to sleep at my flat and I was glad when he left. The following week I was sitting on a bus in Florence when he got on looking very scruffy. We just nodded but didn't speak.

I may have told these three
stories before.
When we were in a holiday tour in India I sat next to a couple in our party whilst waiting for DH . We got chatting and they asked where I lived. When I told them, they said “ oh we were there a couple of weeks ago for a college reunion. It turned out that the reunion was the one that my best friend had organised.

On another holiday in the South of France, we were chatting with the couple next to us on the campsite . The men got talking about cars and it turned out that when DH had had an accident a few years earlier the other chap had come out from his place of work to help .

Another time on a French campsite we were with my FIL when he recognised a car he had owned years before. He spoke to the current owner who produced the log book with FILs name in it.

DH and I were in Florence with friends, when my friend said that someone was calling my name. I said that she must be imagining it. It turned out to be the supply teacher, who covered me, when I was on secondment for one day a week.
Later that day I was in the Santa Croce church, when I heard a voice saying: Is that you Marydoll? It was the headteacher from the school up the road from mine.

Not me but when my father travelled to Australia in his 80s a once in a lifetime visit to see his brother he was was ambling along outside the Sydney Opera House when he saw a man from the Post Office at the end of his road in Clacton. They had a lovely chat about coincidences.