" Is it you?"

Before i met my husband he was on a solo holiday in Portugal, fishing off a pier when a voice behind him said "have you caught anything?" When he turned around they were both flabbergasted, it was his aunt!

On the beach in Barbados last winter with my little grandson who is mad about fishing. Along came a couple with all their fishing gear and we got chatting about fishing. They asked where we were from, I told him it was a very small village in Ontario and was sure he won’t have heard of it ( he was an American from the mid west).When I said the name he said his best friend lived there. His best friends wife was my hairdresser 🤷‍♀️.

My son and his uni friend were doing their gap year Australia, NZ etc. Stood at a bus stop in NZ waiting for a coach, he heard someone say...Hello there Fella......it was the younger brother of a school friend who was also doing a gap year trip!

During a holiday in France many years ago we were parking in Perpignan when someone called our names and it was a family that lived near us at home, their children at the same school as ours. It was quite unbelievable to see such familiar faces so far from home!

Back in 1965, my friend and I took our very first holiday abroad. I was 17 and she 18. Walking along the beach in Majorca, we saw three young men walking towards us and recognised them as living in the same town back home. Small world!

I am in a Community Choir. At our last concert I went down into the audience at the interval. A female almost pounced on me saying my name and that she had spotted me up on the stage. I hadn't a ckue who she was until she said her name and where we had known one another. Hadn't seen one another since age 11 65 years ago when her family emigrated to Australia. Absolutely flabbergasted. Her second visit back to UK in all those years and spending a few days with a family relative who was also in the choir hence being in the audience. Perhaps it was the choir dress code, almost like a school uniform that jolted her memory. Managed a quick catch up the next day, but 65 years, astounded!

I was returning an item at a customer service desk in a large department store when a voice behind me in the queue actually said “It's you isn’t it?”
She hadn’t even seen my face.
Apparently she recognised my voice from school a good ten years previously.
We weren’t even close friends in class.
I found it rather scary that my voice should be so memorable.

I once chased an old classmate around town trying to catch he up. Finally I touched her shoulder. Hi. Long time no see. Its me T....
Your are J Herring
No she replied I'm I....Haddock.
Oops
Another Oops moment
A good friend had a controlling husband who bought her a racing bike to firm up her 'flabby thighs'.
In town I spotted her standing with two others. Long dark hair, parka, racing bike. I crept up behind her, grabbed one thigh with both hands, rubbing it vigorously. "Cor lovely pair of thighs". I growled. She turned and yup. Wrong pair of thighs.
Oops sorry I said before fleeing. I thought you were my friend.
I bet she's glad she wasn't.

It’s a small world - and getting smaller with each day. It’s not unusual to run into someone you know (or a mutual friend) half way around the world even, when you least expect it.

It would be amazing to me if someone recognized me after 50 years.
USA Gundy

I haven't had this experience but once went to speak to a man in a pub who was the absolute double of a guy I'd known well at uni. I addressed him by name and he looked quite confused and insisted he was someone else. His girlfriend gave me such looks! She obviously thought I was making a move on her man!

Some years ago I was interview for a nanny position in London. The lady was a lovely American lady, but I didn't accept the post as it wasn't as long-term as I would have liked. Some months later, and in a new job, I was out in Manhattan with my charge, when I heard my name being called. It was the lady who had interviewed me in London. It turned out that shortly after she interviewed me she had been called back to the US to work. We had a lovely chat. What a small world!

Many years ago, we ran into our old next door neighbour in a swish Hotel in Paris. We’d been invited to watch the tennis, as DH’s company was a sponsor. Our neighbour was working in Qatar and came in with a group of robed Arabs for a meeting. I couldn’t help myself and shouted ‘bloody hell, it’s Peter R!’

My friend's son was standing at a bus stop in Brisbane. A young man asked if he'd gone to BIFFY. This is a college in Belfast and yes they had both attended there at the same time!

We were on a cruise and went to the cabaret club max 50 guests. Drag queen decided to focus on me DH said just go with it we don't know anyone here and will never see them again. At the end of the evening the couple at the next table came up to us to say her DM lived 10 miles from us and she visited weekly!

All the time, the world is indeed VERY small, especially if you are a well travelled family of multiple immigrants.

When daughter was about 15 she ran away to Spain to meet an older man she had met on holiday.He was a bouncer in a club and didn't look after her, no food in the flat only drink etc.
Luckily my friend and her husband were on holiday and quite surprised to bump into her. They fed her and lent her money to get home. He had the cheek to phone her and ask if he could visit us but hubby soon sorted him out.
She grew up very sensible after this episode!

I was on holiday in Malta and a woman approached me - she apologised saying how much I reminded her of an old friend who she'd lost touch with many years ago

As the conversation went on....the 'old friend' was actually my mum and they'd been at school together in the 40's!

Whilst working as a school secretary we made a long awaited trip to Egypt, we visited the Valley of the Kings and descended a very long tunnel into the tomb of Rameses VI, coming up this tunnel on the other side was the school secretary from the neighbouring school!

My dad always saw someone he knew when we were nowhere near home - one time in LA Airport!

But my favourite anecdote came from his brother, my Uncle. He was a doctor, trained in Edinburgh, and then went and lived in Africa (think Nigeria) where he did research into Malaria. (He even had a pet cheetah which he rescued and had on a lead, and a talking parrot!) He was in the bush, and one of his boys (this must have been the early 1950's/late 1940's maybe) came running up saying there was a 'white man coming'. So he was welcomed, fed and watered and they got talking, when my Uncle said "how's your Susan?" The man looked astonished, as it turned out that my Uncle had gone to school with his sister!

My Uncle Bob was a larger than life character and had many, many stories - I spent my honeymoon at his house built on the side of the cliffs in Maple Bay on Vancouver Island, from which you could see whales passing in pods, and eagles sat on the trees below, and he hired a car for us to drive around the Rockies, fabulous! (Since very much divorced though!)

I was at Singapore Changi airport and heard a familiar voice. It was a lady I worked with. I had no idea she was going to Singapore at that time. Once we were on a cruise ship in Europe, thousands of miles from home. Just randomly the person next to us, looking out across the water, was someone my husband knew from work.

kittylester

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!'

😂
Did they go on to say ‘will you just take a look at my dodgy knee?’

On my first holiday with my boyfriend now husband . On a beach in Rhodes he heard someone call his name , it was the daughter of the neighbours when he was a child .
When my kids were at primary school , I was on the PTA and was manning the refreshment stall . A man came up to me and asked if I was tenko and used my maiden name . He was a friend of my first proper boyfriend when we were 17. We both grew up in the neighbouring county . He also had kids at the same school .
My husband is an electrician and his neighbour recommended him to one of the school mums . When he returned after seeing the job , he commented that the woman was a younger version of my aunt , she even sounded like her . This woman was a second cousin of mine from my dads side that we don’t have much contact with.

DH and I were in Florence years ago and decided to climb to the top of the dome. Got to the top and the only other people up there were a couple who we’d known from our children’s school but who had moved 100 miles away a few years earlier.

Twice happened to me I went on a solo holiday to the opposite end of the country, found it all online, really cheap, a little B and B, towards the end of the week I was talking to the owner and asked him where he came from, he said somewhere you ll never have heard of, it was literally a mile away from my house
Another time I was in the channel isles and sitting on a beach in Herm totally empty apart from me, another couple came walking along sat a few feet away, we acknowledge each other (empty beach remember) and had a few words, asked where I was from and so were they, same town, again about a mile maybe two from my house !!!

When we were living in Singapore I had an appointment at our medical centre and sat outside waiting my turn. A tall well dressed lady came and sat beside me. We stared at each other. It was a girl I had been very friendly with during my early Army training but never thought to see again once we were dispersed to different units. She was married to quite a senior civil servant. We couldn’t stop talking.