Several coincidences of meeting people.

My husband and I were visiting New Zealand, driving ourselves and using motels. One morning, we were watching the boiling mud at one of the thermal areas on the North Island, when another car pulled in to the small car park and a couple came across to where we were standing. As usual, we fell in to conversation. They too were English, and it turned out that they used to live in the small village where we live now, but they had moved north several years ago. At one of the motels on the South Island, we were amazed to see the names of a couple from the town we lived in at the time in the visitors book from the previous day. The husband of the couple used to work for my husband in the past. Unfortunately, the owner didn't know where the couple had gone, so we didn't meet them. Closer to home: I was sitting on some rocks at the back of a Dorset beach in the summer, when a small group of people arrived and set up easels and began sketching. One lady moved away from the group and came and sat quite near to me. After a while, we struck up conversation and it turned out that, not only did she used to live in the small village next to where we lived before we moved down to Dorset, but she and her husband were good friends with my brother in law and his second wife. I was using the PO in the next village and the lady in front of me turned round and made a comment about sending something to a place near where we had previously lived. It turned out that, not only did I used to teach her daughters, but my husband knew her late husband through work. She had moved down here over 20 years ago, but only been in the village for a few months. Many years ago, walking along the coast from Craster to Dunstanburgh Castle, I saw a lady coming towards us who looked vaguely familiar. By the time we got close, I realised that it was the lady who was replacing me in my teaching job the next term. I'd only seen her once before at her interview and never saw her again as she only stayed for one year.