It's a small world....

Jagraf

My cousin was sunbathing topless, somewhere in France (about 15 years ago). All of a sudden she heard "hello Mrs X". She was a customer of the bank where my cousin was a cashier.

greeneyes

My daughter got to know a girl in Dublin through the internet and she came to visit us in Cambridgeshire. I used to live in Hertfordshire and it transpired that her uncle had been my science teacher at school, some 30 years ago!

KateHargrave

When I was at college, I met a new group of friends (who are still my friends to this day) and used my Dad's old wooden pencil case. My friend asked whose address was written inside it and I explained that my Dad used to live there when he was a kid - it's about 10 miles from where I lived at the time. My friend looked astonished, it was next door to her house. Her parents were much older than mine, and had actually given my grandparents a moses basket for my dad to sleep in when they used to be neighbours.

Alienna

I love small world stories!

The best one I have is when I started in a new office last year. Got friendly with one of the girls... The first coincidence was realising she knew an ex-colleague of mine (found this out through Facebook). More and more coincidences came out the more I talked to her. We'd gone to the same primary school (albeit several years apart), she'd worked in the pub around the corner from where I was living, and we may have inadvertantly walked past each other and not realised - as we had been reguarly going to the same place for several years earlier! It was like our paths were definitely destined to cross! Even weirder was when we were talking with another colleague, and they realised they'd lived in the same row of houses - which was around the corner from me!

Raine_E_Day

A couple of 'incidents' spring to mind...

Found myself sitting next to distant cousin at work,well over 100 miles form where I grew up and same for him. I came from Sussex, he from Scotland. I'd mentioned to him (we'd been working together for 3 years) that a relative was leading jockey in a big race that day. He said how odd, as same for him. Turned out we were related to same person!

The other instance was more recent. At a regional managers' meeting (seven of us from different counties), again a great distance form original home, I thought one of the newcomers looked a little familiar. Turned out she was a friend from school (where I grew up - over 150 miles away) and I had been to tea at her house over 40 years ago!

BarryBlue

elmer wrote: »

A few years ago we went on holiday to Toronto from Scotland, and met a lovely man in the museum there who talked to the kids about all the exhibits.
The following year we went to Vancouver, where we met the same man at the aquarium, we said hi and he said we were a long way from home in Toronto.
We explained that actually we lived in Scotland and just on holiday in Canada and he was astounded that he had managed to meet us twice within a year a thousand miles apart.

This reminded me of something similar that happened to me back in the 80s. We were having a couple of weeks in Corfu as our regular holiday, same resort in June, for about 3 years. During that time you would often meet up with people who you had seen there before, nothing too unusual in that. We got friendly with a family from Northern Ireland and had dinner with them a few times, but didn't keep in touch outside of the holidays.

Then one year we decided to go to Northern France in the car. We took the Portsmouth-Cherbourg ferry and after parking the car went to the passenger deck. First people we saw were the same Irish family who were driving down to Southern France.

Jadorejesu

Love this thread!

I have a coincidental meeting story that blew my mind when it happened. I lived in Paris in the first half of my gap year and went to a church for internationals, where I got to know an English lady quite well. After a few months I left to go backpacking around South Africa.

I decided on a whim to go to church in Johannesburg, and went to a large evangelical church on a Sunday evening. It was the church's centenary celebrations, so people from all over the world had come and there must have been about 5000 people there. As they were announcing the names of the visitors, they announced the name of my friend from Paris. Thinking it an odd coincidence that someone had the same name as her, I turned around to see where they were pointing, and lo and behold, only two rows behind me, there she was! :T

OneWay_2

Still find this one incredible...I have changed the names but the story is real.

My dad, Jason Stephenson bought a new mobile phone - took it home, all was working OK. Until about 4 hours later when it completely stopped. So he called the mobile company, after telling them his mobile number & name, which were both fine, they asked for address & Date of birth. When he provided these, they told him they were WRONG!

So he tried again, tried every security question going - all wrong. He had to go back to the phone shop and try to get to the bottom of it. When he arrived the phone company could see that his SIM had been deactivated because a newer sim for that number had been activated in its place. My dad knew nothing about that??!

It turned out that the phone company had accidentally duplicated two mobile sims with the same number. On the same day, some 200 miles apart, these sims had been bought on the same mobile contract - one was my dad. The other guys name? Jason Stephenson!!

Denando

When I was younger, we moved house about 200 miles away to a new build. After buying it but before moving in, we went to measure up or something and our next door neighbours were visiting their new property at the same time. Turned out to be one of mum's old boyfriends from 15-20 years before. Both families moved in and were great friends and I started dating one of their kids.

misty-mitts

Love reading all these. I've got two to add. Youngest son born and brought up in Southampton. Moved to Northampton to work, and has become engaged to a lovely lass there. Recently they were discussing the last game Southampton FC played at their old stadium in 2001 as they had both been there - my son as a local supporter, and his fiancee having been taken there by family members they were visiting at the time. On comparing photos, after the game, when all the supporters went down on to the pitch, both our sons were immediately behind her in all the photos taken of her.

The other incident happened a couple of years ago. We used to take in foreign students, and had three adult Europeans coming for a week. They were late arriving, having stopped at Tangmere Aviation Museum (40 miles away from us) on their way from Dover. That evening they asked us to take them to the local pub, as they wanted to see what an English pub was like. Being a Sunday night, it was almost empty, in fact there was only one other customer there. It turned out that he too had been at the Tangmere Museum that day, and they'd all got chatting, and he'd translated things for them, and they'd gone round together.