New Friend

My second favourite coincidence story. I bought a chick-lit novel by an established writer partly, I admit, because it had an RAF background and my childhood was also spent on RAF stations. I soon realised that I recognised the places in the book but when I came to reading about seeing a certain film in a certain cinema I was amazed, as I had seen the same film at the same time in the same cinema. I was moved to contact the author and it emerged that our fathers had indeed been stationed at the same place at the same time but Julie was younger than me. She was delighted that I'd got in touch, however, as she'd had a massive crush on my younger brother and always wondered what had happened to him. Sadly, he was terminally ill at the time, otherwise I'd have been tempted to try a bit of matchmaking. Paul has since died but Julie and I have become firm friends, and although she lives in Oxfordshire and I live in the Midlands we meet up often as she frequently visits her parents who, it turned out (a further coincidence), live just a few miles from me.