Cambridge Coincidences Collection

I often read the newspaper at the same as having the TV on in the same roon. It is not uncommon to hear the same word being spoken on TV as you are reading it in the paper, especially if it is a current news story. However, on one occasion, I was completing a crossword, and filled in the word TOTEM at exactly the same time as the word TOTEM was mentioned on the TV programme. It is an amazing coincidence to find that a word which you rarely hear in daily life featured in two of my senses absolutely simultaneously.

In 1850, my great great grandparents, Robert and Margaret Wilson, left Ireland during the potato famine. They travelled on the Charlotte Jane, one of 4 pioneering ships which went from Plymouth to Christchurch, New Zealand, as part of colonising mission. Robert was a carpenter, and the Wilsons travelled under the patronage of the reasonably wealthy Ward family from Ireland, who sent 3 of their sons (aged about 16, 19 and 22) on the same ship, to help found the new colony in NZ. Their experiences of the journey and the early days of the new settlement are captured in a book called, ‘The Journal of Edward Ward’. The 2 elder Ward sons drowned in Lyttleton harbour in a tragic boating accident shortly after arriving; the youngest son, Hamilton Ward, who was then aged about 17, stayed for a while before returning to Ireland. The Wilsons stayed in New Zealand, until my grandfather came back to London in 1930 with my father, then aged 4. There appears to be no further contact between the families. Fast forward to 1969. My parents, Brian and Ruth Wilson, moved from Cheshire to Banstead in Surrey, buying a 4-bedroom detached house in Higher Drive.

Many years ago my eldest daughter Lauren, upon returning from holiday, excitedly showed me her recently developed photographs. We were looking through and there was one of a young lad. I expected that this to be of someone who she had met. But no, she had no idea of whom he was. So, obviously, 'it' had got mixed up with Lauren's at the developers. At the time I was misguidedly running (or ruining) a Sunday football team. About a year later a young man appeared, new to the area, and asked to join the team. (You're probably ahead of me here.) There was something about he that I could not put any of my fingers on, then awhile later I was sorting out those photographs that we never seem to have an album for....and there was this very young lad in that aforementioned photograph. I took 'it' to the next game and his jaw dropped even lower than mine.

In the 22 years I had been working in schools, I had never a met a child or a member of staff with the same birthday as myself. I then went to work in a new school where there were not 1 but 5 pupils with the same birthday as myself. Over the years they left one by one until the last one was due to leave that July. I was sad to see her go, as it had been fun to share the birthday assemblies with those children. Then I had an application for a child from another authority who also shared my birthday. Against the odds, he was finally accepted into the school and he left as I retired.