Cambridge Coincidences Collection

What are the chances of being double-booked into a sleeper cabin on the Aberdeen-London Euston Caledonian Express on a Wednesday night in January? Just this week, this happened to me, presumably as a result of a computer error. I have travelled on this sleeper on various weeknights, quite a number of times over the last few years, and I have never been double-booked before. What is most remarkable however, is that the person that I was double-booked with is someone that I know professionally. The population of the region is less than 500,000, and only a very small subset of that number is likely to travel on the sleeper train. I would love to know what the probability of this event is?

About 12 years ago, I was invited with my then husband and child to a barbecue, in a very rural part of Perthshire. Although I have lived in Scotland for many years, I am actually from the south of England. I didn't know the people holding the barbecue, but was invited by a mutual friend. Also at the barbecue was the mutual friend's sister, with her husband and children. Whilst talking to them, I learned that although they were Scottish, they lived in the south of England because he was in the Navy. We were talking in a group for some time, when I started to think I had met the husband before, and we were about the same age. We couldn't think of any place, such as university, that it could have been, and the conversation moved on. However, later when we were talking about his career in the Navy, I mentioned that my uncle had been in the Navy, stationed in Dartmouth, Devon. At this point, he asked my uncle's name. His father had also been in the Navy, at Dartmouth. His family and my uncle and family had lived next door to one another! We had in fact met before - about 25-30 years ago as children, when I had stayed with my cousins during school holidays!

In 2002 during a trip to Sydney, Australia from the UK, I visited a secondhand bookshop in Cronulla. The owner asked me what sort of books I was looking for and what I had read recently. I mentioned The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy as a book I had recently enjoyed. The owner went straight to a shelf and pulled out A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and having read the blurb I went ahead and bought it. About a third of the way through I came across a boarding pass and was surprised to find a familiar name on it, my sister's initial and surname. At first I just thought this was a minor coincidence of someone with a similar name, but when I looked more closely I saw that the outgoing airport in the UK and the destination in Turkey fitted with a trip my sister had been on. When I got back to the UK I asked her if she had read the aforementioned book without mentioning any other details. She said yes, she had taken it on holiday to Turkey but never finished it as she wasn't enjoying it. She then left it behind....

In 1986 we spent several weeks in the Far East including 3 weeks touring China (before the fall of Communism!). For the return trip, I had booked two nights at the Singapore Hilton - to get a hot bath and relax, and because the lobby had 80 shops. On arrival, my husband suggested I wait with the cases whilst he joined the queue at reception to check us in. Of course, having been starved of shops for 3 weeks, I said I did not want to wait with the cases, and was going shopping!. He as "very keen" for me to stand and wait with the cases and I told him that it was foolish to leave me there as I was bound to see someone I knew. He told me not to be ridiculous - we were in the middle of Singapore. So I waited with the cases. Within two minutes, a lady (now deceased) who I knew from a charity group I belonged to walked past and asked me why I was standing with cases when there were 80 shops in the lobby! I left the cases, we went for a coffee and a look around the shops. Well, I had told him that I always meet someone I know! PS We divorced three years later, but I don't think that was the reason.