My grandfather's footsteps

My maternal grandfather Arthur said he had experienced a lot of strange coincidences in his life. Later, several coincidences happened in my life, relating to him. My mother and her parents were from Gloucestershire, and the beauty and history of Gloucester Cathedral was one of Arthur’s most inspirational topics of conversation. I myself had never lived anywhere near Gloucester. I grew up in Devon, studied in Cambridge, then lived in Buckinghamshire for 16 years. One day my husband, who was a railway manager, decided out of the blue that he wanted to run a cathedral instead. He would have considered any cathedral in England and Wales, but he was appointed Chapter Steward at Gloucester Cathedral. (Coincidence 1.) We were strangers in Gloucester. I decided I must get a job. I went to an employment agency and the first job I saw was for a Technical Author – a suitable opportunity. On enquiring, I found that the post was at an engineering firm in Dursley (17 miles away from Gloucester). This turned out to be the same firm where my grandparents had met as employees in 1927. Within a week I had been appointed to the role, working in the same 15th-century building as they had done, in an office overlooking the lawn where their tennis club photo (in my possession) had been taken 70 years earlier! (Coincidence 2, affected by coincidence 1.) My grandfather had left that job in 1937 to set up his own engineering works in Brimscombe (10 miles from Dursley, 20 miles from Gloucester). Later in life he wrote a fascinating memoir, which I was editing before and during my time in Dursley. I decided to offer the book to a local publisher, the History Press, and they accepted it. The offices of the History Press were in the exact same building that had housed Arthur’s engineering works in the 1930s and 40s! (Coincidence 3, affected by coincidence 1.) Arthur did not find religion very plausible, but he told me that the one thing that seemed to him like ‘design’ by a creator was the wonderful coincidence of the moon and the sun appearing to be exactly the same size even though their sizes and distances are wildly different (demonstrated so dramatically in a total eclipse of the sun). Arthur died in 1989. Many years later I discovered that there was due to be a total eclipse of the sun in Britain on 11th August 1999 – this date was Arthur’s 100th birthday! (Coincidence 4) (It would also be interesting to know the likelihood, in a random solar system, of our sun and moon coincidence occurring, as mentioned above.)