Cambridge Coincidences Collection

After my wife and I separated she moved away with our son Matthew then aged two and I use to visit every month / six weeks. On his sixth birthday I visited and the house was empty no furniture they had gone. Eleven years later I had re-married and we owned a restaurant in Bath, we were just about to close for lunch when an American tourist walked in saying he had lost his way and was looking for directions to an address in Bath. I gave him directions then ask what was the nature of his visit to our lovely City. He told me that eleven years ago he wnt to visit his astranged wife and six year old son and that when he arrived they had disappeared from their home and eleven years later he was given information that they were now living in England. This stopped me in my tracks, we both had sons we had not seen since their sixth birthday both had gone without trace with their Mothers and were now both seventeen years of age. I told him that this was fate and we must find both boys. To cut along story a little shorter a policeman friend of mine agreed to help with our search. Within 48 hours we found the address of the Americans son, they were re-united.

A friend was cleaning out his outdoor toilet in preparation for a use-change into a potting shed. After having removed several layers of detritus he discovered that the newspaper used to originally cover the walls came from the exact date of his birth. What a coincidence.

Back in the 70s when I was teaching biology at a local comprehensive school in Devon, my husband and I used to go to London most Easter holidays to stay with his brother, and then spend a couple of days exploring the city. One morning in Foyles I was browsing the biology text books when I looked up and saw my head of department ten feet away doing the same thing. Half an hour later, and still reeling from the coincidence, I rounded the corner in Charing Cross Road and ran into the Head of Art from the same school. When meeting up with someone at a prearranged time and place could still be fraught with difficulty, what chance of encountering two colleagues by chance in all of London's millions in just half an hour.

In 1979 on one day I visited in-laws, went swimming and then to a concert at Queensway Hall Dunstable. While at the concert I noticed my bracelet was missing. I popped across the road to the leisure centre to see if it had been handed in. My bracelet was duly produced. The receptionist asked if I was sure it was mine. Yes, I replied. Thought no more about it. Next time I visited my in-laws, my mother-in-law produced a bracelet and said you left this here last time. I was incredulous. So now I have two identical bracelets. And yes I felt guilty that I had someone elses. By that time it was too late to return it to the leisure centre. I've had many coincidences in my life but think this is the most remarkable.