New Year Astonishment

Before telling my story I will give some facts. There are about 140,000 people living in the King's Lynn area of Norfolk. Leicester is about 65 miles away as the crow flies and has about 115,000 homes. Nottingham and Northampton are about the same distance away and Grimsby, Lincoln, Peterborough, Bedford, Cambridge, Ipswich, Norwich and many other towns and villages are within a 65 mile radius of King's Lynn, so there must be many hundreds of thousands of homes in this area. At a New Year's Eve party in King's Lynn I met a man who told me that he had spent Christmas with his daughter in Leicester . . . Me: Oh yes. I was born and grew up in Leicester. Whereabouts does she live? He: In Knighton. Me: That's interesting. It's where I grew up. Which road? He: Brookhill Road. Me: Well I never! I spent my childhood there. What number? He: 29. Me: But . . . but . . . that's the very house! We then discussed the special features of the house. From a populatiun of 140,000 or so I had met the man whose daughter had come to live in that particular house, one of hundreds of thousands of possible homes. I marvelled. Later I considered how many people I had met over the years somewhere at least as remote from Leicester as King's Lynn, and how many relatives each would have had; and what other occurrences I would have considered remarkable, eg living in one of my other homes, being in one of my classes at school or college, playing in the same badminton club, meeting one of my relatives or friends. Clearly there were many ways in which an astonishing event could have occurred, so that experiencing one of them was more likely than I would have thought. But still I marvelled. Randomness is such that everything that nature allows is possible and we expect it to occur with a certain frequency - although a rare event does not HAVE to occur, unlike those in a lottery -, so perhaps I should consider how many people do NOT have equally remarkable experiences. If there are a million of them for everyone who does, perhaps I should accept my event as one which should have occurred with about that frequency. Yet still I marvel. (I have changed the name of the road and the house number.)