Cambridge Coincidences Collection

In about 1968, as one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, I visited a primary school in West Sussex as part of a study we were doing of school/parent relationships. I asked the head, as usual, for the names of the teachers. One was Miss G who, he told me, had taught in north London and was now nearing retirement. I decided to see her first, knocked at her classroom door and went in. I told her that I had been talking to a group of teachers the preceding week about here and her earlier colleagues. She was surprised. I explained that when, in 1926, I was a 5 year old in Raynham Road School, Edmonton, I had taken home a page of my writing, all written backwards. My family sat in front of a mirror and read it. I thought how clever I was that I could do that (and still can) and they could not. What I was telling the teachers the previous week was how clever Miss G and he colleagues were not to make me feel stupid. I remembered Miss G as an elderly lady. We worked it out and she was 19 at the time.

My mother in law has a super file she has lodged with us of her discoveries of the background of her family tree. This goes right back to the C17th and the first co-incidence was that despite her family being in Halifax, West Yorks area for decades and decades, and that is where we are from too, we now live toward the North Yorks border and her family actually came from over this way - Brayton and then Church Fenton area. Next, the earliest couple she can find were married in the same church in Brayton in South Selby that my friend had just been given as his first Parish as he progressed from our local Church. And thirdly, in my retail business at all around the same time I had met a young lady who had joined my mailing list who it turned out lived in Brayton - but the co-incidence was that her surname was the same as the lady of the couple who were married at Brayton church - I asked this young lady if her family was long time in Brayton and she said 'No they were from Halifax.....' as far as we know we are actually not related but how strange!!

Ellen Hannah P born 17 Aug 1897. Dorothy Mary P born 17 Aug 1898 These are in the Arkengarthdale,Yorks Registers. According to a midwife friend this occurs quite often

This is one I herd from a friend. His brother was best-man at a friend’s wedding and the groom gave him a small package which he would need on his wedding night to look after , asking him to return it before they left. Unfortunately after the pair had departed he realised he still had it. He knew the couple were spending their first night at a London hotel before going abroad and believed he knew which hotel it was. So he rang the hotel and asked if there as a couple of this name, not a common one, staying there. Yes, he was told, so he got a taxi to take this to the hotel addressed to Mr and Mrs with the name. When his friend returned from his honeymoon he asked his friend what had happened to the package and he explained what had happened. But, replied his friend, that was not our hotel; we were at a completely different one. So it was a coincidence that a couple of this name should have been at this hotel and he wondered what on earth they thought when they received the delivery