Neighbours reunited

Several years ago, when I was in my late 40s, I was talking with an Australian business contact on the phone, when he confided that he was selling his business and that he was meeting with a representative of the company that was buying him out that day. He knew very little about this man, except that he came from my own hometown in the UK. Laughingly, I said "Well naturally, I'm bound to know him!". To my surprise my contact rang me again the following day and said that he thought I did know his visitor - in fact, it turned out that we had actually grown-up together as he had lived just three doors away from my parents. I had left home when I was l9 and I hadn't seen or heard anything about him or his family for more than 20 years. His company completed the takeover of my contact's business and we met up at a trade show in Paris a few months later to swap stories from our share childhood, something that would never have happened in any other circumstances.