Coincidences

We lived in Seychelles for a couple of years when we first married. Our house was perched on the side of a hill. There was a large rock (5 or 6 feet high) wedged in the back wall. It had been swept down by the monsoon rains. Several years later I was working at an Oxford college. I was expecting my daughter and about to leave. My replacement popped in for a quick chat. Turned out that she was Seychellois and had lived in our house after we left. Sadly the house was no more as one day very heavy rainfall had dislodged a massive rock which had careered right through the house causing a lot of damage!

Bus stops in Australia! My daughter was in Cairns and from the top deck of her bus she spied someone at a bus stop from her 6 Form

An acquaintance of mine who lived near me went on holiday to a place 80 miles from where we live . She got chatting to a man sat near her on the beach . He turned out to be my DH’s
brother ! He lives about30 miles in the other direction.

When I was working a new man joined our department. He had just moved into the area. We discussed our families and some time later he asked me if I would consider babysitting for him. I agreed and checked the address- it was a house I had lived in as a girl! It was very strange going back into the house nearly 40 years later.

My DD who has no accent halving lived in a few places and worked in London' had been to stay with us when we moved to the North West.
When she went home to a country in the far east, she was in a supermarket when a chap tapped her on the shoulder and said do you come from...? Her reply was no but my parents do and have moved back, the chap had gone to school with DH. We can only think she used an expression we would use when her child had moved away and the chap had picked up on it.
Once on holiday in a quiet part of Scotland, a couple walked past and said hello then doubled back it was DH's much older cousin who lived hundreds of miles from us and did not know we were on holiday.

Many years ago I was leaving London Kings Cross for a trip to Edinburgh. I stood at the door looking outward only to see an incoming train and there at a door was a fellow who used to be in my class at school.

My first marriage lasted 28 years. Soon after becoming divorced I met my current partner . When we had been seeing each other for a few weeks we discovered that we had both previously got married on exactly the same date and year. We had even had exactly the same time for the wedding ceremony. It still seems very odd!

40years ago I was on a coach trip with our local toddler group. We were on our way through Lancaster when my 3 year old said “See uncle Michael ?” l was amazed that she knew that her Godfather, Michael, was at Lancaster uni. “Maybe at weekend, “ I answered. She then pulled my face towards the coach window, pointing to a figure on an island in the middle of the busy road .... and there he was. “See... uncle Michael ! “

I had an awkward one night stand with a flatmates friend who was staying overnight. Quite embarrasing but we were leaving for Italy the next day. A few days later we were sitting on a bus in Florence when who should get on but him. We nodded but didn't speak.

We bumped into a family from our kids primary school when in a park in Orlando years ago.

When living in Cyprus went to dinner with friends where we met a lady who was staying with them on holiday from the UK.
Three or four years later we were on a camp site in far West Wales; I went to the loos at midnight and who should appear but the woman we'd met in Cyprus! She was also in Wales on a camping holiday.

Another holiday: sitting in a tea shop on the Lizard in Cornwall it turned out that the couple on the next table were friends we knew when we lived in Singapore.

My DH was working in Hong Kong, he nipped out of the office at lunch time and ran straight into an old school friend who he hadn't seen for some years who it turned out was also there on a business trip. They decided to go for a drink and a catch up and as they walked down the street towards the bar they ran into another old friend. They all ended up going for lunch together. I don't think they could get over the coincidence, three people who hadn’t met in ages, all from the same small village bumping into each other in such a busy city, half way around the world.

At school my French teacher used to say that if a French person saw our store-front windows with SALE all over them in January, they might think they were all dirty!
This sprung to mind one January while looking at the local department store windows, 500 miles from where I grew up, and lo and behold there appeared my French teacher and her boyfriend. I hadn't seen her for 10 years or so, and it was a lovely moment, but when I told her I'd just brought her story to mind in that moment, she did look at me strangely.
I like Kate Bush's song 'Strange Phenomena' - sums it up for me.

My friend's son went to Australia for a year. Standing at a bus stop a young man asked if he'd gone to Biffy. Biffy is a slang name for the college he'd attended in Belfast. Indeed both boys had attended the same Belfast college!

My sister and I (on opposite sides of the country) often send someone the exact same birthday card.

We went on holiday with my sister and brother in law, and found the people in the next caravan were from our town and my b-i-l knew them. Every day we bumped into each other during our week there, despite not making up our minds where to go until the last minute. We even followed them home the first part of the journey home. It was very amusing.

When I visited Malta when my late husband was there on board his aircraft carrier, we were on a local bus when a man in RAF uniform, sat behind us, tapped me on the shoulder - he had been at the same grammar school as me and had recognised me.

A man I know was clearing a graveyard for his local church and found a grave with his initials and surname on - not a common surname, either. Made even spookier by the birth date - exactly 100 years before the man clearing the grave.

On our annual Scottish hols many years ago, my husband trotted down a wide deserted beach with our five month old son on his shoulders to give him his first view of the sea. There in front of them, exactly where they stopped, was written in the sand: 'Ian and Ruaridh' in large letters. My husband's name is Ian and our son is Ruaridh. We just had to photograph it!

I lived in Italy in my twenties and was friendly with a couple, she English, he Italian. We kind of lost touch when I came back to the Uk..

About 20 years later I was in Venice with my mother and we walked down a side street with tables outside cafes. Heard a voice and there were this couple….they did not live inVenice and were only there for that one evening !
(She has a spectacularly famous nephew by the way?)

On a beach with my son who at the time attended a school for pupils with disabilities. Saw a lad sitting in a wheelchair up on the sea wall and thought "he looks familiar" and then told myself not to be silly. A few minutes later a woman (who Id never seem before) was walking along the beach, saw my ds and started shouting and waving tohim by name. Yep. The lad I had spotted was one of his schoolfriends!!

Same beach, another holiday we met one of DHs colleagues!!

on honeymoon back in the 80s in Corfu a couple walked past us on the beach, my husband stopped to chat and then informed me it was his exgirlfriend. She and her husband had got married on the same day as us and gone on their honeymoon to the same place. When we got home our wedding picture appeared in the local paper, in the picture next to ours was the same couple.

asked not faked

Was visiting my sister in the USA.
She took us to a garden in Baltimore where we stopped by the young gardener ,who faked us if we were British.
We said yes ,we came from a place that he’d probably never heard of ,Solihull.
He went to school there before training at Kew Gardens !

A few times. Once I went on a course in Melbourne from (old) South Wales, got into a lift in the hotel and a chap was already in there who was in the same year as me in Uni, a good friend of my neighbour in hall of residence. He was also visiting Australia with his work in a totally different field.
Another time I had travelled to Edinburgh to start a new job. DH was staying in our old house in Wales as he hadn’t been able to find work yet, and having driven up with me was, I was seeing him off at the bus station on the way back. We bumped into one of 2 brothers, who had carried me between them around the village night clubs on a skiing holiday in Italy when I broke my ankle a few years previously. Didn’t know a soul in Edinburgh otherwise (and never saw him again all the time we lived there either)

I’ve just started a new job and the chap sitting opposite to me has just told me his father used to live in my house which used to be 3 little cottages in my village! Love these sort of threads ?