Renuka and Renata

I have no idea who Renuka and Renata are, but they were part of a very strange occurrence. My girlfriend and I were moving to a “shared house” in Storey Road in Walthamstow, NE London. The Chequers pub was our local. As we arrived, two sisters were leaving. We quite literally passed them in the hall, and they were gone. They had been occupying the room that we were about to take over. Over the next few months living there, we heard many stories about Renuka and Renata, which, frankly, I have forgotten. They were Kiwis of Maori descent , who had returned to New Zealand. Several months later, my girlfriend Jacqui, left to go on a World Tour, across the US, to New Zealand, Australia, Asia, and back to the UK. I followed her about 2 months later, and after travelling across the US, I met up with her in Auckland. I applied for a job at a photo lab, and found myself in a random suburb of Auckland for the interview. Afterwards, I went to a bank, to try to withdraw some money from a cashpoint. My UK bank had issued me a card, which they assured me would work all over the World, but at that time (the late 1980s), all that kinda thing was very new. I’d tried the card in many places in the US, and also in NZ, but it had never worked yet. I was running low on cash, and needed some funds. Well, as usual, the card didn’t work.....and for the first time, I decided to try to withdraw money over the counter. I went into the bank, and the teller attempted to validate my card, without success. But he assured me that it should be valid, so asked me to complete a form. This included my address in the UK. Of course, I no longer had a UK address, so I simply put down my last address there, the house in Walthamstow. The teller disappeared to check with his supervisor. A minute or so later, a lady came out, the teller’s supervisor. She looked at me in disbelief, and asked me if this was my UK address. I said it was....to which she replied: “That’s really strange, because I used to live there....” It turned out that she was Renuka, the girl who I’d passed in the hall, the same girl that had lived at that very same address in the UK. Despite this incredible coincidence, we didn’t exchange numbers (which I sorely regret), and I didn’t even get my money in the end! Skip forward two months. I’d found a great job in Auckland, and the company promised me work in Sydney, which was the next stop on my World trip. So, here I was, working in Sydney, and I went to a bank (again, it was just a random bank, the only time I ever went there). I was standing in the queue, and the girl in front of me noticed that I had an English accent. She struck up a conversation with me, and revealed that she’d recently returned from the UK. I asked her where she had been living, and found out she’d lived in Walthamstow. Yes, you guessed it, she turned out to be Renata, Renuka’s sister. Once again, I didn’t think enough of it to get her number, or stay in contact. But there you go – I met both sisters within a short time of leaving the UK, both of them in banks. What is truly remarkable about this double-coincidence, is the method of discovery. The unique and unusual series of events that led to Renuka realising there was someone in her bank, who lived at the same address she’d had on the other side of the World just a few months before – is what I consider to be a “meta-coincidence” (one level of improbability layered with another. Is there are mathematical term for this?) So, this is what I’d call a “double-meta-coincidence”. There are many more coincidences I have to relate. Very interested to find this site. :)