Cambridge Coincidences Collection

I had known my friend for several years. She lived about a mile from me and during that time we had frequently swapped keys so we could feed one another's pets or water the plants. For a couple of years I even had a spare key for her which I kept in a dish in my hall. It was attached to a key fob which had a photograph of her daughter on it, and this meant I could always identify it as my friend's key rather than one of ours. One day I noticed my husband, who was unable to find his own key, had used this spare key to lock our front door! He had not noticed the picture on the key fob. I was very surprised by this, and thought there must have been some mistake, as the key worked perfectly. I rang my friend, and arranged that she should try to unlock my front door with her own door key! Sure enough, we confirmed that the our keys operate each other's front door locks perfectly! Her lock was the same one that had been there when she bought the house 13 years earlier. We had replaced our front door, and lock, some six years earlier.

I called a school friend out of the blue, who I hadn't seen in a few months. He said that he was busy and going to a workshop that afternoon. So was I so I asked and it happened to be the same one. When we arrived, another person arrived and sat next to us. She had briefly taken the same A-level class at sixth form and sat next to us then. What seemed odd was that this was at the House of Commons in a group of about 15.

I and my partner were on holiday in South Africa for the Christmas of 1999. We were B&B-ing at a place in Constantia. One day we decided to visit Cape Town by train rather than the hire car. Returning to the B&B in the afternoon we came across a Ristorante, which looked good enough for a visit that evening, so we did. The woman running the Ristorante, of Italian stock, took it upon herself to speak to all customers. So she obviously recognised us as Brits rather than Locals. She asked where we actually came from, and Cambridge being the largest town close to where we did live we thought it more likely she might recognise where that was. "Ah, I've just recently come back from there". It transpired she was seeing her daughter into Cambridge University. So we had to admit that we didn't actually live IN Cambridge but at St. Ives, just to the north. "Ah, I know it, I stayed there whilst visiting Cambridge." And where did she stay? At the (then) motel some 300 yards from where our house was. Further discussion elicited why she had chosen that place to stay.

My birthday is the same day as my fathers, and my sisters birthday is the same day as my mothers.