Cambridge Coincidences Collection

In 1982, as a student, I was travelling from Venice to Athens on a train through Yugoslavia. The journey took 40 hours so all the young people shared their food and got to know each other. One Venezuelan guy was very popular because he had a guitar. I told him I was from Leeds, not expecting him to have heard of it, but he shot back, "Do you know Gabby Jones? She's my aunt." Out of three-quarters of a million people, I did! Not only that, I had to remind him what his uncle was called. The funny thing about the coincidence was how it struck the two of us so differently. I was amazed, but he wasn't surprised at all. He said he knew everyone where he comes from. (Maybe that's what life's like when you always carry your guitar.)

Just after Christmas 2011, I went to Tesco's to re-stock. Came out, packed away my shopping and got in the car to drive the 10 minutes journey home. Switched on the radio - I don't always do this but when I do, as on this occasion it's Classic FM. There was a lovely piece of Mozart playing and I thought that I must listen at the end of it to see which piece it was. To my huge surprise, after the announcer said it was the Jupiter, he went on to say it had been requested for all UK family and friends and former colleagues by my nephew in Adelaide. Two or three minutes extra in the supermarket, failure to turn on the radio and I would not have heard it at all but I was thrilled as I am very fond of my nephew who emigrated about 4 years ago. I emailed him on my arrival at home and said I'd heard his request, which pleased him enormously as he had thought it unlikely that anyone would hear the request.

I went to school in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and my best friend was another boy in the same year called Barry. After we left school in 1969 we went our separate ways. I married and had two sons. My wife, myself and our two sons left South Africa in 1992 and returned to the UK. One son never settled in Europe and returned to South Africa soon afterwards. He lived in Johannesburg for many years, married and had a son of his own. We visited them approximately every two years. Then he and his wife decided to leave Johannesburg and move to Cape Town. When they had finally settled there, my wife and I decided to visit them in December 2009 – exactly 40 years after Barry and I had left school. We landed in Cape Town, hired a car and drove to my son’s house. We had just arrived and sat down together for a cup of tea, just a few hours after landing, when my UK mobile phone rang. (I had brought it with me for emergencies.) An unfamiliar voice at the other end introduced himself using Barry’s nickname from 40 years ago.

As a 10 year-old boy in 1943 I lived temporarily in Anglesey to avoid the bombing, and I was sent to school in the neighbouring village of Moelfre. I was somewhat mystified to find that the two schoolmistresses who ran it were not only a mother and her daughter but also that they were Germans - with whose country Great Britain was at war. Almost half a century later, I retired from a full career in the RAF to a cottage near Chichester. My opposite neighbour was a German - a retired Lutheran pastor with whom I became very friendly; we used to go sailing together and he has become almost part of our family. One day when we were out in the boat I asked what had happened to him during the war and he confessed that he had, much against his will, been conscripted into the Luftwaffe as a young anti-aircraft gunner. We both laughed, as he knew I had been in the RAF, albeit just after WW2, and I then told him that I had once been taught by two German ladies and mentioned their surname. When he heard this his eyes opened wide and he told me that in the 1930s he had a teacher of the same name.