Cambridge Coincidences Collection

For the last 10 years, I've been plagued by the recurring number 13 on digital clocks. Several times a day, I will glance at the clock...and it's 13 minutes past...I get in the car, glance at the clock...13 minutes past, sit at the computer...13 minutes past. Sometimes of course, I get the 'double' 13:13!

My 18 month old son, who was already a very chatty soul, was travelling in his pushchair across the nave a Gloucester Cathedral. Two women were walking towards us, one approximately mid sixties, the other around 50. Both had light hair. OH....exclaimed my son, pointing, in a really animated fashion... "NINA....NINAA!!!...Look mummy, NINA!" ( My sister in law WAS called Nina but she was dark skinned and dark haired, 36 years old and of Asian descent.) I replied "No, my love, THAT's not NIna".....and continued walking. Suddenly, from behind us, one of the women called, "Did your little boy call my friend "Nina"?"....I told them that he had, and said that he got confused, and that I could not work out why.... She interjected, immediately..."BUT, my friend, SHE IS CALLED...NINA!" WHAT is the chance of that?

Many years ago, when I was about 21, I picked up a hitch hiker. We had been driving about 25 minutes and begun to get to know each other when he became agitated. I asked him what was wrong, and he explained that he could see crashed airplane debris all around us. He explained that he had experienced this sort of thing before and it was a prediction of the future, which he experienced from time to time and that they invariably came true and they upset him. I got rid of this nutter about 20 minutes later and forgot about him. Five years later the place where this stretch of dual carriage-way became vary famous, as it was called Lockerbie. I am a professional engineer and a research scientist type of person. When I explain this to other scientists they dismiss this as impossible nonsense and that independent verification is required, but i am the independent witness aren't I? and no he didn't have a turban

In 1960 I began teaching in Lordswood Boys' Technical school. One of my colleagues there was Tom Davies. I left the school in 1963 and in 1968 took a post in up-country Kenya. Our nearest European shop was 35 miles away, in Kisumu, and one day in 1969 I looked along the counter only to see Tom standing there! He was teaching in Nairobi at the time. After retiring in 1991 I came to France to live and organised French lessons for the English there. In 2005 a couple joined our group, I recognised the Derbyshire acceny, and they'd recently left the village I was brought up in and had lived opposite my sister! Colin Ashby