Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Back in 1963, I was returning from Stoke Poges to my bachelor flat in London on a very wet rainy Sunday night and driving down the Earls Court Road I was obliged to stop at the pedestrian crossing outside Earls Court Underground Station. Glancing in my rear view mirror I was alarmed to see that the vehicle behind me, a three wheeled Meschersmit, was not going to stop in time and was skidding on the wet road. Following the inevitable impact, the exchange of names and addresses, made worse by the rain and some ribald comments by some Australians sheltering in the station entrance, took place and it transpired that the man driving the Meschersmit was a certain John Priestly who lived in Shawfield Street off the Kings Road in Chelsea. We left the scene, he with his creased Meschsmit and me with a crumpled rear bumper and I returned to my flat. The nxt day, Monday morning, I was starting a new job and joining a firm of Surveyors as a junior surveyor whose offices were in Flood Street in Chelsea, just off the Kings Road. Being somewhat nervous on the first day, I arrived at the office far too early so decided to walk round the block a couple of times to burn up some time.

I have an interest in history in general, and in pursuit of this I purchased a book called ""The Civil War- an Illustrated History", about the American Civil War 1861-1865. The book has 425 pages. One evening in the summer of 1995, my partner and I were at home. I was reading my civil war book, but to be honest I can't remember what she was doing. Each week in those days a man used to drive into our street with a boot full of videos to hire. We usually took something each week as we were, and are great movie fans. It was Gill's turn to go to the car, and before she went she asked me what type of movie I fancied. I said, "get me a war movie if you can". As she returned with her selection I was reading page 248 of my book, specifically an account of the six hundred members of the first volunteer black regiment in the Union army, (54th Massachusets), and their assault on Fort Wagner. 246 of the troops were killed in the assault.This account took up only half of page 248. She handed me a movie which I had never heard of, called "Glory".

I had agreed to meet my boss at Toddington Motorway Services for a brief consultation, as we were both travelling on the motorway but in opposite directions. Arriving at the services I was walking past the games area and, galncing in, spotted my son playing one of the machines. My son was in the army and was off to Yorkshire on a training course, along with several colleagues. The driver of their mini bus had chosen that location to take his rest break. What are the chances of that?

I was an assistant at a school in France in 1967. On Whit Saturday I was at a party in Paris with a nuber of student teachers. A violent thunderstorm disrupted the evening, electricity was cut and it was 11pm before we sat down to eat. Someone had had to leave and we were 13 to sit down; the superstitious host said someone was in for some bad luck and insisted on having an empty 14th chair. The following Wednesday - the post was fast in those days, I received a letter from my mother to say that my grandfather had died in the night; she suggested I did not return home as I would not be able to make it in time for the funeral. As this was my first family bereavement I chose to go back to North Wales, travelling overnight and getting there early afternoon. I went to my grandfather's shop expecting to find my family there - it was closed. When I reached the house the whole family was gathered for the funeral - a double funeral, as my grandmother had died later on Whit Sunday unaware that her husband had passed away earlier in the day. A telephone would probably have made life easier but it would not have altered the timings of the events.