Here is a series of related coincidences connecting ten people over four decades and half of England.
I am John from Lytham St. Anne’s who went to school with Frank and Steve 1968-75, then shared Liverpool University digs from 1975-77 with Ged from Newcastle.
In 1976, travelling to the NUS Motorcycle Rally in Cambridge, I over-nighted in Leicester University Halls. I spoke briefly to a random student while we waited for a kettle to boil in a communal kitchen of the grim sort often created by 18-23 year-old male undergrad’s. Turns out the ‘randomer’ knows Ged as the paper boy who lived two streets away from him in Newcastle!
By 1981 I’m working in London. Dawn, a kind and gorgeous Halifax lass, and Nige a kind.....of junior Bruce Springsteen, move into the flat above mine. Nige, it transpired, was not only from Lytham St. Anne’s, but had worked a hotel summer job there with Frank and Steve, my old school mates! Around this time I also met Dawn’s younger brother, Pete, for about 15 minutes.........
In 1984 Ged, and his pal Simon, stayed with me in London whist attending a Neil Young concert.