Coincidences

30 years ago we rented a cottage in the Mourne mountains in Co Down. When the owner heard where we were from she asked if we knew another couple from the same town who had stayed with them - we didn’t know them. Later that year we moved house and our new next door neighbours turned out to be the couple who had stayed in the cottage.

I’ve just remembered another. On a campsite in South of France , DH noticed that the car just pulling on to the next pitch had a registration local to where we live. Chatting latter DH and the man were talking about cars and DH mentioned an accident he had about 10 years previously. After asking DH where the accident had happened it
turned out this man was the very one who was first on the scene to help , having seen it happen from his window.

My father was born on 30th January
My daughter was born on 30th January
My daughter's other grandfather died on 30th January, the date of her 30th birthday.

My sister in laws brother , an antique dealer ,bought some cigarette cards. As he looked through them a small envelope fell on the floor. He picked it up & put it back with the cards. Again, the envelope fell on the floor. He picked it up again & when he eventually opened it, it was a card announcing the wedding of my mother & father.

I spent my early years in Uganda and remember very clearly a lovely Scottish teacher I had in primary school when I was nine. Fast forward sixty years and I was living in a small Spanish village in the mountains. On my first visit to the local book club who should I meet but the very same teacher. We had both ended up in the same little village. She was in her early nineties but as sharp as ever. She still had the ability to scare me, think the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

My son was born on 8/8/95 weighing 8lb 8oz. So we considered 8 to be lucky. My niece went one better when she gave birth to her son on 8/8/18 at 8mins past 8 & you guessed it he weighed 8lb 8oz.

I went on holiday to East Africa (Safari and Beach stay) and when entering a shop in Nairobi, heard an English voice I recognised. It turned out to be a girl I knew from a nearby (Pearl Assurance) office. I worked in the Leeds, West Yorkshire office, and she in the Bradford Office of the same Company!. We spoke to each other on the telephone most weeks at some point, collating figures of various kinds!

Nearly 70 years ago my son had been telling me about a new boy at school they called Maff, who he had become friends with. I was helping with the teas at the local carnival when I looked up and in walked G a friend from school with whom I shared a domestic science table. Although she has now moved away we still keep in touch.

One day in 2009, my brother collapsed, my father had a fall and my 18 month old grandson had a mild fit, all 3 ending up in the same hospital at different times on the same day. A worrying time.

On holiday in Australia my DH and I were in a place called Noosa Heads on the outskirts of Brisbane checking into a hotel. The receptionist said she recognised our accents and looked at the booking details we had just completed. She said she had originally grown up in a small village next to the town we were presently living in and my DH said he grew up there as well. Turns out they had been next door neighbours for quite a few years!

My 5 year old grandson has been staying recently and every now and again he would say, "crikey O'Reilly" . none of us had any idea where he'd got that from but when I mentioned it to my niece she said that my mother used to say it all the time. She's been dead for 32 years so obviously my grandson had never met her. I remember her saying now but don't think I've ever heard anyone else use
it

Just remembered another one! When we were first married my DH and I lived in married quarters in Germany. (Army). We had a phone installed. A year later we moved back to the UK and bought our first house. We instantly had a phone installed there too. Our UK number was the same number as the one we had in Germany, only backwards.

My German husband came to UK on a hiking holiday when he was sixteen years old. After visiting Stonehenge he became mesmerised by a school near Salisbury he passed by. He kept wondering for a few days afterwards what kind of girl goes to that school? Twenty five years later we met and he discovered it was my school.

My Dad died when I was just 17. He was cremated and my Mum arranged for him to have a rose bush and a plaque displayed. However we never visited because my Mum said she didn’t need to remember him there. Around 10 years later my DH and I took our two young sons for a walk through the same cemetery. My youngest son who was 6 at the time was running ahead and looking at the various plaques. He suddenly stopped at one and started to read it out. I nearly had a heart attack as it was my Dad’s plaque and my son couldn’t have recognised it as it obviously had a different surname. I then realised it was my Dad’s birthday and burst into tears, but I like to think he was perhaps watching over me.

Had one just this morning which is in itself a coincidence given this subject matter. I was in the treatment room at my GP surgery, and on the wall was a doggy calendar with August featuring the cutest wire haired dachshund. I thought how lovely it would be to have one. Walking home, I reached the entrance to my road just as a lady came around the corner with her dog. Yup. A wire haired dachsund. She must live near me but I have never seen her or the dog before. She informed me that she has always had that breed, and that they can be rather stubborn - something I have read about them before. We agreed that they were a bit like people then.

When my boys were young, I hung my washing out one windy day and later found that one of my son's stripey sports socks was missing. Next day I went for a walk with my mum to local shops through a short-cut that we didn't usually use and I saw a sports sock with stripes hanging on a branch of a tree in someone's front garden about 15 mins away from my house. I took it off the tree and took it home...it was the missing sock.

Grannygravy I had no idea! Let me know if you meet up again. Funnily enough I’m in Hadleigh at the moment visiting one of my DDs.

Loving reading these posts as I am a great believer in fate.
In the summer of 1978 I went to Nice with 2 friends with our rucksacks and sleeping bags and slept for 2 weeks on the pavement outside the railway station. On our first night we got talking to 3 lads from Holland who were in the army and stationed in Breda. In December 1979 I was in Amsterdam with one of the friends for a weeks holiday and on the spare of the moment we decided to go to Breda. As we were walking out of Breda train station the 3 lads were walking towards us. We spent a lovely day together and still send Christmas cards to each others family. Also last Saturday I was at work and chatting to work friends during coffee break and we were trying to remember the date another friend's FIL had died from covid-19. I said it as 29 April it was the same day but 6 years later. as the husband of one of my friends I had trained as a nurse with. When I checked my mobile later there was a voice mail message from this friend which she had left at the same time as I had been talking during our coffee break.

50 years ago, when we were on our honeymoon in Spain ,we were sitting by the pool and my husband recognised a lady sitting across from us . She was very tanned with long blonde hair and then she saw him and recognised him too. Turned out they were childhood friends (through their parents) and hadn’t seen each other for fifteen years.
It as a coincidence mainly because foreign holidays weren’t very common in those days and the place where we stayed was very remote. We have remained friends ever since!

We went for lunch the day before travelling to Thailand, the Manager asked us did we know Alan and Cherry, another couple of his regulars, as they had also recently gone there.
We were on a beach a few days later and as a couple approached us talking, I recognized a local accent and took the chance it was them.
As they came level and smiled, I said, hello, is it Alan and Cherry.... and it was.
We spent a nice few days with them, until they left 3 days later.

Chicklette one AC and family are in Shoeburyness close to the beach and I am in South Benfleet.

There are a few GN members in our area that meet up, hopefully we can meet up again soon it would be lively if you could join us.

We went to see Barbra Streisand in Madison Square Garden, and one of my colleagues said how jealous she was. When we got there, she was sitting in the seats next to us, a surprise birthday present from her husband.
They were next to us on the flight home too!

My brother got chatting to another Scottish fellow in a pub in London, and also had the ‘ oh I come from a wee village, you won’t have heard of it’ conversation. Turned out he had lived in our house before us, and his father worked with ours.

We have on our wall a lovely copy of Decorated version of the American Declaration of Independence, several years ago,when I came downstairs one morning, I found that it had fallen off the wall and smashed on the floor , the date That day was the Fourth of July! I checked with my son, and he said that when he cam home around one am it was definitely still on the wall, how weird that it should stage it’s protest on the Fourth of July! I’ve since had it reframed, and it has behaved itself ever since.

DH was at the local bowling green one summer, a number of years ago, and got into conversation with an American visitor. He told DH that he was in NE Scotland to visit his town's twin in Scotland. When he told DH the name of the Scottish town, DH was immediately able to tell him the name of the American twin. The man was flabbergasted, saying that no one he'd met in the UK so far had heard of his home town, Mount Dora in Florida. We had spent an afternoon in that delightful small town while crossing from the east to the west of Florida. I had read about the town in a fairly obscure travel guide, and we went out of our way to visit, and took note of the sign relating to it's Scottish twin, which is about 70 miles from where we live.

Grannygravy Yes, were in Great Wakering now. Are you local to us?