Small world

I had a change of manager start work whilst I worked in Birmingham in the NHS. I soon learned she used to travel every other weekend back to her home in Ireland to be with her daughter who was attending university there. In the week she stayed with her parents in Birmingham. After several weeks I had the chance to get to know her a bit better. I asked her where in Ireland she lived. I was surprised when she named the same county where my dad was born and grew up in the first part of his childhood. So I asked her what town she lived in in that county and it turned out to be the same town as my father, a very very small town in the north of Eire where everybody knew everybody. We were both surprised and excited and questioned each other further as we were sure our families must have known each other but we didn't seem to be able to make too many more connections, realising we were a good few years apart in age and we never really did care to listen to all the stories our grandparents and parents told us about the good old days in Ireland. Still, none of my close family live over there anymore. And my manager wanted to know where they moved to. "Well here in Birmingham" I said. "Whereabouts?" So I explained where. And we were once again shocked to discover that whilst I was growing up in Birmingham, my manager was living on the adjacent road to me for a number of years at the same time because her family moved over from Ireland when she was growing up! I would have walked past her house all the time!! It was only later as an adult she moved back to Ireland herself. So the conversation questions followed the route of schools and parish churches we were in as we grew up. It wasn’t long before we discovered that my manager’s gran used to work for my aunt and uncle that my manager was in the same class as my close cousin and used to go to her birthday parties at her house (which I may too have been at). So our families did know each other rather well afterall! I confessed to my manager that when I first saw her I was very surprised at how much she looked like one of my cousins and she laughed because she thought I looked incredibly like her aunt! I bet if we traced it back enough we would probably find we were related!