Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Early in the 1980s, whilst on a slow journey to the Christian faith, I was talking with a friend about prayer. Mark asked me what I prayed about; I said that I prayed about world peace, famine, the environment, etc; all major matters. When I asked him what he prayed about, he told me that he prayed about anything, even a headache if he had one. I felt that God wasn't interested in minor personal issues and we ended the evening by agreeing to disagree. The following day we drove to Bristol where Mark wanted to buy a guitar and we managed to find a parking meter with about 5 minutes left on the meter. Neither of us had any change, but we decided to 'chance it' and have a quick look in the shop. As I got out of the car I said, "What we need now Lord is 10p" I turned away from the car and there on the ground, a metre away, was 10p. Being really slow [and a Christian as well!] the co-incidence about the previous evening's discussion about minor matters didn't occur to me until a day later.

While on holiday in San Francisco we were invited to lunch with a family we had met. They asked us our travel plans and we told them we were travelling on to Phoenix to visit friends, describing how this couple had a holiday house there but lived in Wales where they had a business called Bacchante Crafts producing screen printed slate products. The family said they had bought some coasters like that when they visited England, they showed them to us and printed on the back of the coaster was our friends label, Bacchante Crafts, Wales.

On the West Indian island of Montserrat, the date 17th September is always greeted with trepidation, due to four incidents, all within living memory: 1965 PanAm 292 crashed into the volcano, killing all 30 souls on board (it was the first Boeing 707 ever built); 1989 Hurricane Hugo (Cat IV) devastated the island - 90% building stock destroyed, island had to depend on UK aid thereafter (only minor injuries and no death; other, previous hurricanes have visited with death tolls, as have earthquakes, but none on 17 Sept); 1996 first major explosion from Soufriere Hills Volcano produced a 13km high eruption column and did extensive local damage, and was a shock to local population, however no-one injured or killed (the volcanic crisis started in 1995 and the eruption is on-going today - there have been some bigger explosions since, and one with fatalities, but 17 Sept 1996 had a big impact on societal perceptions of risk); 2011 a major prolonged violent thunderstorm caused extensive damage across the island, knocking out power and destroying US$30k of volcano monitoring equipment.

Each year my company attends the International Travel Catering Association (ITCA) exhibition with a number of invited guests. In 2008 this event was held in Nice, Cote d'Azur. I and a colleague, David N who was assiting me for the week went down to Nice on Mon 12th Feb 2008 to check that all our e-mail and telephone arrangements were in place. The main body of our guests were due to arrive the following day. </p> <p>On the evening of the 12th we decided to eat at and check out, one of the restaurants that we had been recommended to and had booked for a dinner two days later. Having had a very good meal and being well satisfied with the quality on offer my colleague and I left the restaurant. Outside the resaurant was a sort of patio are with umbrellas for smokers to indulge. In the centre of this area was a goldfish swimming around in a old fashioned goldfish bowl. Apropos of nothing, David N pointed at the goldfish and said "That fish's days are numbered". I thought nothing about this and we strolled away chatting. </p> <p>Two days later on the evening of Wed 14th Feb we held the dinner at the restaurant with about 40 guests.