Random Coincidence?

Being a choir member and performing in the winter concert on Saturday I spotted a woman in the audience who,I felt, seemed familiar. I couldn't help having a look at her trying to figure who she was. At the interval before leaving the stage I said to the member next to me that I felt I knew someone in the audience but just couldn't figure who she was. The member exclaimed the woman was her aunt and told me her name. The first name seemed familiar and on asking if she knew her maiden name I was dumbfounded. The person attended two dance schools like me, we actually partnered one another in exhibition tap and ballet pieces in concerts. Hadn't seen her in 61 years. She moved with family to Australia where she established a career in dance and then shoe design. Back in UK for a 6 week break to catch up with old friends and family. Great reminiscing at her niece's home until the early hours.

My cousin and I were upstairs in Paddy's Market, Sydney buying wine to take on a cruise the following day. The young man who served us asked where in Wales we were from.
He had been to our town many times, as his mother was from the area. He phoned his mother and we had a conversation in Welsh on the phone. She was brought up less than 10 minutes from where I used to live as a child.
Another time I was with my sister and cousin in a bar in Amsterdam. I realised that this younger man kept looking our way, and in the end he approached us. He was from our town, knew my son in school, his brother was my G.P. and his mother was brought up in the same street as my cousin. Again he phoned his mother and my cousin had a conversation with her. He no longer lived in Wales.

I will repeat my friend's story. Her son went to work in Australia. He was standing at a bus stop when another lad asked if he'd been at Belfast Tech. Turns out they'd been there the same year. How's that for coincidence 🤔

I played Bridge with a lady from Ireland, on a cruise, and it turned out she was matron of the nursing home my MIL was in.

Without outing the other GN member involved.

On chatting we found out that our AC had met on holiday years before and had remained friends.

DH and I went for lunch and round trip on a British Pullman Belmond train for my birthday few years ago, leaving from Cardiff. We were sat at 2 seater table across from another couple, who were from Oxford, who we got chatting to. When I mentioned I was actually Scottish and where I was originally from, the husband said his best friend in Oxford had lived in my home town when he was younger. I said I'd worked at the university. So had his friend and I said I'd dated someone from that dept. He said his friends first name and I added the second name. The train had a lot of carriages, so quite a coincidence we happened to be sitting next to a couple from Oxford.

i was widowed at 39 and wanted to meet someone who could be a friend/companion i met a man who was 11 years older and over the years we chatted about school, jobs etc, i grew up with my gran and she shopped at the co-op, there was a boy there that used to give me a sweet and say hello...i was only 5, i would run round the shop till i found him, he was the same boy and we had 18 happy years together.

Now in my mid 70’s, 6 years ago I was in my local in the far South West, ( lived there for 55 years) buying a round of drinks. Speaking to the stranger next to me, I asked where he came from. Rothbury ( approx 500 miles away) he replied. “Oh I used to live there, my father used to run the local hotel and my best friend at school was HF, her parents had a farm “ and I described how I would cross the river and fields to visit her. He looked at me in astonishment and said, “My best friend of 40 odd years is married to H .” This pub was a small local one, not many tourists visited it. We couldn’t believe the coincidence

We had some work done in the garden, the gardener who did it asked if he could bring someoneround to view it, later when in Malta standing at a bus stop were this same couple!

Before I was married, I worked for a soft drink’s company, my job was to ring shops, pubs and factory canteens to get their orders.
One of my regular customers was a lovely lady, who was the canteen manager at a very large car manufacturer.
Anyway I got married and we bought a house about 8 miles away. The car manufacturer was in the opposite direction about 10 miles away.
After a couple of years all the young couples started having children and I became friends with the girl who lived opposite us.
Yes, you’ve guessed it. She was the manageress I used to ring for her order.

A family I know were in the midst of emigrating to New Zealand en masse - grandparents, children and grandchildren. One twelve year old GC was very unhappy about it. She didn't want to leave her friends, or start in a new school.
One day she was on a chat line on her computer. A girl began chatting to her.
"Where do you live?"
"In England, but we are going to live in New Zealand soon."
"I live in New Zealand! Where are you moving to?"
"It's a little place called xxxxxx. You've probably never heard of it."
"Yes I have. I live there! How old are you? I'm 12"
"So am I,"
Needless to say, my friends' GD couldn't wait to get to NZ to meet her new friend, who was also a pupil at the school she would be attending.
A chance in a billion co-incidence.

My husband and I were in central London and saw an elderly lady hesitating at the bottom of a large long escalator on the tube, she had a suitcase with her.I approached her and offered to escort her up the escalator and my husband offered to carry her case.This lady took my arm and up the escalator we all went, we chatted about how busy London and the tube were, she said it wasn’t like this where she came from.I asked where she lived and yes, you guessed ,we were all from the same town in South Yorkshire.

My OH grew up in the same road as my ex husband!

My youngest son went to Athens last year and bumped into a guy he worked with in London a few years ago. The only time they had met in intervening years was in Times Square NYC two years before.
My eldest son used to hang out in a bar in Hong Kong and discovered the barman used to serve in a bar two villages away from our family home in UK. His dad had been landlord and he’d lived there several years. Small world indeed

I was working at a Local Government Office many years ago when a new girl began to work in our department.
One day she started to tell us the story of a young boy who had been drowned in a garden pond many years before. I suddenly realised that my mother had told me a very similar tale.

We then found out that her mother was my mother's cousin on the maternal side - we were second cousins and I had met her mother whilst out shopping with my mother.

On another occasion I took my 5 year old son a few times to a clinic. On this occasion I met a young mother with her daughter and we discovered that I had shared a flat with her husband's twin sister and been to their joint birthday party before she had met him. We are still friends.

I was delivered by a doctor who had the same surname as the man I married twenty six years later!!!

A market trader I knew in Cornwall always used to have a long holiday in the New Year to get over the Christmas rush. One year he went to Australia. He was staying in the North and went for a walk along the deserted coast. He went right out to the end of a long jetty and was enjoying the peace and quiet when a thick Cornish accent behind him said "It be proper job me ansome" You can't escape from the Cornish however far you travel.

I had an artist neighbour who lived a couple of hundred yards up our lane. I very rarely saw him (probably twice a year) because he was always working. I went up to London to an art exhibition and who was in front of me in the queue for refreshments?

On a coach tour of NZ I found myself sitting next to my Dads golfing partner in Bognor Regis !!!

Our daughter lives approx 800 km from us; we live in a small northern town. When she was planning her wedding, she randomly chose a marriage officiant from the internet in her larger city.

When they had an interview with the officiant, he was an elderly fellow, and mentioned that her name was familiar (ours is not a popular name). It turned out that he had previously lived here in our town, and apprenticed under her late grandfather, who had died when DH was a young boy.

My DD took it as a sign that her late grandfather approved of her wedding.

My sister met a guy at a meeting. She said to her DH that he reminded her of my ex husband. Not looks but mannerisms ect.
She eventually told him. He asked surname of my ex. It turned out that his gran had had the same maiden name.,(an unusual name) she had run off to S Wales with her lover. Married and settled there
She originally came from London. She invited my ex to meet him. They sat looking at family tree and my DS said it was like watching twins....I found pic of him on FB and he looks just like my ex FIL. Amazing

When I was about 9 I ended up at the pharmacy of a small Yorkshire holiday resort. I was in agony and crying, as I had multiple jellyfish stings. Mum was advised to take me to the local doctor. Years later I was chatting with my husband who remembered being in the same pharmacy where a little girl with platts in her hair was crying as she was covered with jellyfish stings. We often wonder if it was us.

We have an unusual surname, especially its spelling. We arrived in Sydney after a long flight from UK, there was an announcement whilst on the plane, asking our family to report to the airport information desk. When we did this it turned out that another family with the identical name from our flight was already there.

My grandparents were married in 1922. Years later Gran had put on weight and had her wedding ring cut off. Her older neighbour, a widow, gave Gran a gold ring to wear - possibly her own. Only a few years ago, on visiting my grandparents’ grave, I stopped to read the almost illegible wording on the adjacent grave which had obviously never been cared for. To my amazement, it was that of the neighbour who had given Gran the ring. The churchyard is enormous and the 2 ladies died many years apart. Neighbours in life and in death.

This one was the oddest
Started a new job very quickly as they were desperate for my skills so hardly any details given over the phone.

On the fist day a lady from the office came to me for my details.
Name, the same as hers.
Date of birth, same as hers.
I asked if she knew what time she was born, we were both born about the same time.

I'm from the Northwest of England and was shopping with a .friend in Leeds both living in the North East at the time. The assistant said sorry but she could not understand us. Two voices piped up from behind "We can." When we turned they had been my Grans neighbours when I was little and gone to school with my friend
My father always attended the Rugby League Cup final and in the 1960's as he sat down,A voice said "Hello'B...", it was a friend he had not seen since he was in the navy in WW2.