Cambridge Coincidences Collection

On my first day working at a photocopier wholesaler in St Albans, one of the engineers, named Kenny, offered me a lift home. It was only a five-minute drive, during which time we started talking about travelling. We’d both been to Australia several years previously. It turned out, it was at the same time. I’d lived in several towns and cities, my last stop was the Gold Coast. “That’s where I went when I first arrived, I stayed with some friends there” Kenny said. “When I was there it was too cramped, there were a whole load of us living in a tiny apartment in Labrador”, I replied. “Really? That’s like where I stayed…with some friends……that’s what their place was like…….you don’t know Chris and Kim, do you?” Kenny said. “No way! You know Kim and Chris?” I asked. “It was the first place I went when I flew into Australia. Everyone was sleeping on the floor on mattresses……..and Pickles….” “Oh, my God!

Seeing a Uni lab mate from Birmingham leave the shore in Viet Nam. On the same round the world trip, meeting a Brit in New Zealand who turned out to have gone to the same woodwork class as the other person I traveled with 8 years earlier. </p> <p>Then bumping into John in a hostel in San Diego when my card stopped working and managed to blag a discount because I could share his dorm key. </p> <p>On this trip I left South East Asia 11 days before the Tsunami and I left New Orleans 12 weeks before Hurricane Katrina.

I have no idea who Renuka and Renata are, but they were part of a very strange occurrence. My girlfriend and I were moving to a “shared house” in Storey Road in Walthamstow, NE London. The Chequers pub was our local. As we arrived, two sisters were leaving. We quite literally passed them in the hall, and they were gone. They had been occupying the room that we were about to take over. Over the next few months living there, we heard many stories about Renuka and Renata, which, frankly, I have forgotten. They were Kiwis of Maori descent , who had returned to New Zealand. Several months later, my girlfriend Jacqui, left to go on a World Tour, across the US, to New Zealand, Australia, Asia, and back to the UK. I followed her about 2 months later, and after travelling across the US, I met up with her in Auckland. I applied for a job at a photo lab, and found myself in a random suburb of Auckland for the interview. Afterwards, I went to a bank, to try to withdraw some money from a cashpoint. My UK bank had issued me a card, which they assured me would work all over the World, but at that time (the late 1980s), all that kinda thing was very new.

Watching 'Take me out' which I had deferred to the repeat 1 hr later because of another programme clashing, one of the girl's suggested the reason she had chosen not to date the guy was because he had cleaned up too well and she preferred 'shabby chic' which was an odd and not oft used term. At the same time I was browsing ebay at the time and had selected 'vintage' items from the search options. One of the related searches presented was 'shabby chic' which I had never before noticed as an ebay search option!