Coincidences

grannyrebel
Have you seen the film?
If you go onto YouTube there is a video of Saroo Brierly talking about his journey.

I saw the film and cried.

No I haven't seen the film yet. I'm still reading the book. Will probably watch afterwards though.

Not lately, but in 1981 after my eldest D and her H emigrated, I went to our local market where they had a record stall. I'd asked for Natalie Cole's " Miss You Like Crazy " and the assistant grabbed an armful of 7" vinyls to put down on the counter and as she walked from the shelf to the counter one dropped onto the floor-----yes, you guessed, it was the one I'd asked for, so I was more determined that I should have it.

From a heap of records it just flipped out from the bundle. The assistant and I just stared at each other then she said, well it saves me going through this lot. Strange or what ?

Not lately but after my DHs funeral I had to take my son to Heathrow as he had to fly home as I drove home in tears on the radio was the piece of music (a favourite record of DHs) I’d had played at the funeral the day before.

Wonderful story - I saw the film first and sobbed my heart out. I have since bought the book but not yet read it.

Not lately, but 5 years ago my daughter was getting married in Victoria BC. We are from a small town in the north, 1000 km north.

Planning the wedding, she picked a marriage commissioner from the phone book, and set up a meeting. When he met them, he paused at her name and asked if she was from Prince Rupert and knew a man with the same last name. In fact it was her long deceased grandfather (my FIL who passed away when my DH was only 9). He had taken a barber apprentice with him many years ago.

When she told me the story, it confirmed to me that someone from above was looking down and approved the wedding!

The film is very good indeed.

Coincidences:

Big family trip to France for OH's 60th. We had all bought him a mandolin and smuggled it in the luggage. When we gave it to him he was very pleased, but there was no plectrum, so I cut up an old credit card to make one. Later in the day Son-I-L playing frisbee on beach and suddenly stopped and grubbed around in the sand and pulled out...........a plectrum!!!

Many years ago we went to St Agnes in the Scillies, renting a cottage by the beach which was owned by the adjoining B&B. On the first morning we met outside a couple who lived in the same place as us, and played quartets with my OH! We then discovered that in fact they had booked the cottage too, but the owners then discovered they had double-booked and put them in the B&B!

I had a very big coincidence play out right here on gransnet.
I could only really tell with the other person's permission though.

A few years ago DH and I were in India on holiday. I was chatting to a couple who told me that he had been in my home town a few weeks earlier at a college reunion. I asked him if it had been arranged by R* ***. “Yes“ they said, looking amazed when I said that she was my best friend.

I was in Sydney and went to a huge bookshop with a friend,with lots of secondhand books etc. I walked down one aisle there were a couple of paperbacks in a pile on one of th e shelves. I picked up the top one and there was a photo of a girl I was at uni with on the front. (Book was about a band she’d sing in).

By the way Lion the film was wonderful, but the book less so !

My mother and I who at that time, lived in Cornwall, flew out to a wedding in New Zealand, after which we were tourists.
In Rotorua we went to a Maori concert and with about 200 other tourists enjoyed a Maori concert and feast.

At our table was an American couple and the husband told us how he was visiting Canada, Australia, New Zealand and finally UK tracing his scattered ancestors.

His plan, he told us, was to fly to the UK the following week and would go to 'a little place you've never heard of.'
And named the village where we lived.

Years ago I worked in a travel agents. Every Friday lunchtime we'd go to the local Chinese restaurant. My manager went on a free trip to Hong Kong (we often had freebies in those days) and in the city centre bumped into the owner of our Chinese restaurant who was visiting family. What are the odds....??

Many years ago on a flight from Sydney to
Perth I met my Mums friend in the queue for the lavatory (they both lived in Spain) I was in tears at leaving my dear friend and had just been discussing with DH if we should move to Australia, Mums friend said (before she knew why I was crying) “I told your Mum you would have a difficult decision to make”

Found out since lockdown that a GN friends AC and family had met my AC and family on holiday in Ibiza several years ago and they lived five minutes away from each other here, they have remained friends. We hadn’t realised that we had met each other’s AC and families.

Dh and I had been married a while and were sharing our family holiday stories. His had been more adventurous than mine and camped all over Europe.
My only experience was of a trip to Yugoslavia in 1967 when I was 18 and had shared the driving with my mum. We found a newly opened campsite and as I wandered around I saw a GB campervan with a good looking young man putting up a distinctive looking orange tent.
We didnt speak but when he told me the story of that campsite, where they stayed for only one night, we both knew it was the same one. We met on a blind date 2 years later.

Husband took a wrong turning and we ended up at a different beach to the one we were headed for. The children needed a cold drink and to let off a bit of steam so we headed to the hotel beach bar. We were 5000 miles from the U.K., 100 miles from our then home.
I recognised a voice at the bar. It was the guy everyone expected me to marry when we were teenagers. He was on his honeymoon and they were waiting for the taxi to take them to the airport for the flight home.
Both of us were stunned and I blurted out (in a stupid, stupid attempt to cover the awkwardness) “Well, it was expected that we would end up together on honeymoon.”
?
His wife assumed he had arranged the I meeting and didn’t talk to him the whole journey home.

I moved to Germany in the 70s and during my first week got chatting to a Scottish couple in a local bar. They said how strange it was that they rarely met British people in there and yet they’d been talking to two English brothers who’d just left. It turned out they were lads I’d known very well from the village I grew up in (population 1200).

And in Alaska another tourist, a teacher, commented that her headteacher had the same accent as me. It turned out that her boss was one of my best friends from school 40 years earlier.

Browsing around Ancestry I found someone else's family tree with my father's name in it. I contacted her and she turned out to be a second cousin, now living in the States. She said she had come back to visit family members in the 60s, but I had no recollection of her at all, though she described my grandmother's garden perfectly. We have stayed in touch, and a couple of years later a first cousin was having a clear out and sent me some old photos to identify. They were taken in my grandmother's garden, and there was a strange woman and three girls sitting in chairs alongside my mother, grandmother and me. It turned out that this was my second cousin and her mother and two sisters, one of whom died of Covid only a couple of months before, so we did meet, and the photos gave her some comfort.

Lion is a brilliant film - well worth seeing.

So many great stories on here!

DH and I met whilst holidaying in Italy. The first time he visited my home town after we returned to UK he was greeted by a girl as we walked along the High St. She was his holiday romance from the year before when they were in Spain.

We went to Devon from Kent a few years ago and met our next door neighbour. We knew they were on holiday the same week but didn't know where they were going.

Nearly 40 years ago I worked for an insurance company and paid out an endowment policy to an old lady with the same surname I'd committed to memory after reading it one hidden document I'd found in my (not nice) mother's wardrobe when I was searching for Christmas presents (I was 7 years old).
The old lady turned out to be my grandmother, who then contacted my biological father - who I'd never met. My father and I enjoyed our reunion until his death 20 years later ?

I work in London and at the weekend met one of my work mates at the Gretna services in Scotland. We recognised each other even with masks on.