Cambridge Coincidences Collection

This happened 35 years ago at work: a strange thought occurred into my mind early in the morning: "I am that which throws sand in your eye." Spontaneous thought such as this was a new thing to me, I noticed it, was curious then amused. A co-worker came over and during the conversation he mentioned having been in a war zone during a sand storm during WW2. Wind was so powerful that he still had some sand particles embedded in his body( his thigh and buttocks) that occasionally bothered him. I had not mentioned my thought but his story formed no association with it. A few minutes later another co-worker brought a box of donuts (a Friday custom) and I chose my favorite. Before he left he whispered: "You might want to wash your face, you have 'sandy' granules in the corner of your eye." It was only then that I saw a connection, it was bit funny. But how could a thought I'd not mentioned trigger another persons' decades old story to come to mind? Was he too polite to tell me directly what he saw?

I work in a care home in Lincolnshire and in chatting with one of the elderly ladies discovered that she used to work as a midwife in my hometown of Bury st. Edmunds. Upon discovering the years that she worked there and talking to my mum about it, I discovered that The lady I now care for delivered ME!

In 1974, 4000km from home, visiting family, we were in a non-tourist suburb of Perth, Western Australia. One our first day, we popped into a small supermarket. We bumped into neighbours from our home town. We were unaware of each other's presence in Western Australia. There are many suburbs in Perth and, within any suburb, multiple shops at which one can buy milk and food. The chances of 'foreigners' from NSW choosing to go to the same section of the same supermarket, in the same suburb, of the same city, on the same day at the same time seemed remote. In 1999, I was 20000km from home, in Trafalgar Sq, London, when a friend from Sydney hailed me: the chances of Australian tourists being in London at the same time seems more likely, but the crowds in Trafalgar Square on a sunny day in high tourist season would have made it easy for us to not spot each other. Indeed, if the other person had not spotted me, I would have not noticed her as I was walking away from her when she hailed me. In 2000, I was in Rio de Janiero, riding an elevator to the top of Sugar Loaf mountain.

My mum needed to pick up a hire car and I didn't drive at the time, so my friends mum offered to drive mum and I into town to pick it up. My friend and I had known each other for around 5 years at this point, but our mothers had never spent any time together. The four of us were in the car and my Mum was staring at my friends Mum very intently. When I asked what she was doing, she announced that my friends Mum was in fact my Dads first wife (my parents had long been divorced too so there was no awkwardness). This had all happened before my friend was born so she wasn't a long lost sister or anything. But after 5 years of friendship, my friend and I discovered that our mothers had both been married to the same man.