A chain of eleven coincidences

I went on holiday to Crete with a student group in 1961. I was eighteen. We went to Knossos. It was very touristy. We persuaded our driver to take us somewhere less crowded. We drove 40 miles down the coast to a temple complex which was completely deserted, apart from an englishman aged about 35 and his pre-raphaelite-looking wife and two young children. We briefly exchanged greetings. Six months later, the same englishman climbed a stile into our garden in our isolated holiday house in Snowdonia where I was staying with a university friend. He said he was lost and asked me the way to the village of Croesor. I recognized him and invited him in for a cup of tea. We got talking. He lived in Hampstead. So did I. He was the son of German jewish emigrants who had come to Britain in the 1920's (?). I am the son of a german jewish refugee who came to Britain in 1936. He attended the Hall School, Hampstead. So did I. He went to Westminster school. So did I. He studied French and German for A level. So did I. He went to Magdalen College, Oxford. So did I. He studied French and German. So did I. He became a poet. So have I (but with far less distinction). We finally exchanged names. He was Michael Hamburger, who became well known as a poet and as a translator of Holderlin (with an umlaut on the o). I told him that Holderlin was my father's favourite poet. He asked me my name. I said my name was Francis Uhlman. He asked me if I was any relation of the artist Fred Uhlman. I said I was his son. He then said "Your father wrote to me last week. He is querying a translation I have made of a poem. There is a german word Fahne, which means flag. Your father thinks the poet may actually referring to flag irises, because the same word Fahne can be used for both a flag or a flag iris. The line is 'the flags are tinkling in the frost' and your father has heard flag irises tinkling in the frost in your garden in Hampstead". My father had no idea I had met a man on Crete who six months later would walk into our garden in Snowdonia. He had no idea that that man would turn out to be Michael Hamburger. Nor had he ever met Michael Hamburger, or even met his parents. Incidentally, Michael Hamburger's brother was the publisher Paul Hamburger, who changed his name to Hamlyn, possibly because there was a pianist of the same name, or possibly because Hamlyn was more attractive. Michael Hamburger died last year(?) aged 84(?). His brother, who became Lord Hamlyn, died a few years before that. I have lived in our former holiday house in Snowdonia for the past 40 years. There is still a stile leading into the garden from the surrounding field.