Crossed paths

I am an Australian who has been in the UK for forty years, now living in a village you have probably never heard of called Staplehurst. Recently I was in my mother's birthplace, Hobart, Tasmania, attending my cousin's wedding. I asked my cousin about someone at another table, whom I thought I recognized, but I was wrong. My cousin then offered to introduce us anyway, since the woman's husband had migrated from Kent many years before. "And where in Kent do you come from?" I asked him. "You won't have heard of it," he replied; "it's a little village called Staplehurst." I told him that is where I live. "My father ran a pub," he said. "I grew up in The Bell. Do you know it?" "Yes," I said. "I had a drink there last week." Bill