Coincidences

We were walking across a sandy beach - a vast expanse with the tide right out. We noticed a couple in the distance walking round and round, scanning the ground, circling back and starting over. When we caught up with them I asked if they'd lost something? Yes the woman replied, they'd lost their keys. I said we'd keep our eyes peeled for them. With that, I looked about me and there were the keys, right in front of me. I held them up - "are these what you're looking for?" I asked, laughingly. "OMG", said the girl, "we've been searching this whole area, walking backwards and forwards for the past hour!" The keys were quite literally about 3 metres from where they were standing!

My strangest ever coincidence occurred when I was on a trip to Berlin. Before I left England, a friend of a friend, whose father was dying, asked me to tell her son to come home to see his grandfather one last time before he passed ... I told her that that I wouldn’t see him as I was going to a totally different location and tried to explain the geography of Europe to her, but she was absolutely insistent. At the time her son was in Czechoslovakia on holiday and it was well before the era of mobile phones or social media! I thought she was being absolutely ridiculous and told her so, as I didn’t want to leave with such a responsibility on my mind. But she wouldn’t have it. I duly set off on my trip. Amazingly, after stopping for something to eat, leaving the venue, some very old elevator doors opened and lo and behold who should walk out but her son. It was just like something out of a film, a minute later and we would’ve missed him. I duly told him about his grandfather and felt gratified to be able to deliver the important message. It’s never made any sense to me how such a thing could happen when it was was visiting an entirely different location in Europe and should not have been destined, in any realm of imagination, to bump into each other, but happen it did!

My DD was born on 9/9 which had been my Granddad's Birthday, I hadn't though much about in the years since he died until that moment. It was the first thing my DM said "do you know what day it is?"

Many years ago when I was single and working in a London office I made friends with a girl about my age. I left when I got married as I didn’t want to do the journey, and after a while said friend and I lost touch. About 10 years later my husband came home and said did you used to work with someone called D? I have just interviewed her for my secretary vacancy. We have been very close friends ever since. And yes, she did get the job.

My brother lived in Geneva and travelled extensively for his job. He was returning from Nairobi via the UK to visit our Mum and on his flight he had a very pleasant conversation with the gentleman sitting next to him who, it turned out, was the brother of my Dentist.

I become great pals with a new Secretary when we shared an office and we met up for a meal with our Husbands. Turned out that the two men had mutual childhood friends and haunts and my husband had worked alongside her Father at the Austin Motor Company.

Years ago when my children were in primary school I used to chat to one of the other mothers who came from the North East like me. The family eventually moved away and we hadn't been close enough to keep in touch. Many years later DH and I had a long weekend in Florence. One day we climbed to the top of the Dome and up at the top we bumped into the woman and her husband. Exchanged news about our families and never saw them again!

My life is a series of coincidences - I shouldn't be surprised when another happens, but I always am. Meanwhile (ages ago), my son was talking to another youth from Australia, and he said that he had a cousin in Malta - who was my son's best friend, sitting in the desk next to his, in class.
Once I was drawing the winning numbers for a lottery in the school where I worked, and I said that I would not draw the next number, because people would think I cheated... and sure enough, the other woman drew my number. I am the person who finds a shard of eggshell in the icing sugar of an Easter Egg; the person who finds 7 sausages in a tin of 8... etc.

My cousin visited our uncle regularly. In later years, after becoming a widow, she met and married a man who had also visited that same house regularly to see his aunt - married to our uncle.

When I first moved to France , met some other Brits and
it turned out that the mother of one had been our neighbour.

The Brits employed a Chef for their campsite and this guy
had run a restaurant on the same road in England and had
even cooked our Wedding lunch!

OH and I went strawberry picking years ago and sometime during the hour we were there I lost my sunglasses. A few days later I returned, without any real hope of finding them. I had only been searching for a few minutes when I made my way towards the only other people in the vast field, a young family. Just as I reached them the youngest boy held aloft a pair of sunglasses and shouted excitedly to his mum "look what I've found". Yep, they were mine!!

Do you think we who have all these coincidences are tuned in to them?
Another one;
My DM's father was from a small town on the west of Ireland. He had left in c1900 to train as a ship's engineer in Glasgow. He spent his life in Burma and died long before I was born. My DM married a Kiwi and we grew up in NZ. She didn't go to Ireland, at least not with me.

25 years ago DH and I decided to drive to this village to see if any cousins remained.
We crossed on the ferry to Belfast late at night. The North was still a bit daunting as the police stations were surrounded in barbed wire. We drove through the night arriving early on Saturday morning. No-one was about apart from one woman. I stopped her and asked where we could find a café and a toilet. She apologised and said nowhere was open yet but we could come into her house. She gave us coffee and biscuits.
I told her I was looking for my DGF family.
"What was his name?" She asked in that soft Irish brogue. I told her and she said "but that's my name"
So the first person I spoke to in Ireland was a cousin.
It was the start of a magical week.

Had a holiday in Austria one year and two years later while holidaying in Corfu we bumped into a couple who had been on the same Austria trip.

On holiday in Sydney I bumped into someone, now living there, who had for a short while rented the house next door to us.

Hailed a taxi at Waterloo station after an evening out. When I told the driver where I wanted to go, it turned out that he had grown up in the house next door to where I lived! Quite a coincidence in a city the size of London!!

When I had my first child, we had already decided what we were going to call her. The day after she was born, while I was still in hospital, my husband woke up in the morning at home and put on the radio. The song that was playing was "Louise" by Phil Everley. Guess what name we had decided on!!!

It's a particular date in our family when
1. my daughter was born
2. my uncle, who is still living, was born
3. my paternal grandad died
4. his daughter, my Aunt died.
5. many years ago new born twins died.

The date 8th August - or 8th of th 8th.

My husband took a dislike to a male singer. On one particular morning, he walked out of the room muttering when said singer was being interviewed on tv. Later that day we were in the public library, when a book fell off the top shelf......yes a biography of the singer. In 30 years or so visiting that library, it has not happened before or since.
Ps tomorrow I shall be having my first haircut since February. Whilst I was out the other day, masked up, I was recognised - I was quite insulted!

edit
In between our births and us ending up living in the same road, he had been adopted around the age of 8.....

Chicklette are you still living in Shoeburyness or surrounding area?

My husband and I lived in the same road, though I moved away to a local seaside town without knowing this. He had moved to the road I lived in from that seaside town too!

Later once we were married I found out we were born 21 months apart in a local town across the road from each other.

In between our births he had been adopted!!

Oh, another which just occurred to me: I went to New Zealand one year to visit my son who was working there. He and I went to Queenstown and stopped at a busy outdoor restaurant. While he went to order food a young man came up to my table and asked if he could share. There were 4 chairs. I said I was waiting for my son and he sat down. When my son came back they recognised each other as they were workmates back in England.

I recently traced a distant cousin, our ancestral roots are in Wales. She told me of a relative who had been a vicar in the town where I was born in Cheshire, it turned out that my sister’s primary teacher was married by him in the fifties and she had gone to watch, so undoubtedly saw him. Now the church is my husbands family church, although I met him 200 miles away.

My son went to live in Berkshire and a few years later I found out that his four times great grandparents are buried in a church a few hundreds yards away.
I have many more instances!

Many years ago, my dear husband and I went to Paris for a holiday. On a visit to Versailles we bumped into someone we recognised as being from our little village in Dorset. We did'nt even know we were going on holiday at the same time nor to the same place.
Another time we took a trip to Cyprus. On a visit to the Land of the Kings a coach stopped nearby and one of the people who got off was a work colleague.

Quite a few years ago, when we played cassette tapes in the car, I was listening to a song (I think it was one by the Beatles) on my tape. I then switched the cassette off and the car radio came on. You’ve guessed it - the same song was being played on the radio! I couldn’t believe it.

The number of times I am doing a crossword when someone on the TV says the actual word I want or am writing in the grid, unbelievable.

Many years ago we were on a P & O cruise ship carrying upwards of 2,500 people, and we had opted to dine on a table for 6. On everyone introducing themselves on the first evening, we discovered that one couple, a retired policeman and his wife, lived in the same tiny village as us