Some special meetings

1. In the early eighties when my wife and I were teaching at Hebron University on the West Bank and living in Wales during the summer vacation, a colleague from the same university phoned us at home and asked if we would like to meet in London this same day; after which we could all three travel together to the airport to get our plane back to Tel Aviv Airport, and from there, the train back to Hebron. As all the complications of breaking our journey in London, seemed quite pointless- even for a drink- we declined the offer, and hours later took the train out of Oswestry. We changed trains at Wolverhampton, if I remember correctly, and a few hours later arrived in London and took the tube to London Airport. After stopping at a number of stations we arrived at one- the name I cannot remember- the same friend, Jeremy, sho had phoned us earlier suggesting we rendezvous, stepped from the platform bumping into me as he got on. This coincidence always impressed me because it would never have been possible to even plan this meeting at the time: no cell phones, what have you. 2. In 1966, we said goodbye to, Lyn, one of my architectural colleagues at the time. We somehow failed to keep in touch while we were traveling around to various countries.In 1995, I came back to SW France to retire after working in N. Cyprus, for ten years. My wife remained for another year in her job at the college where we worked. I joined the Randonees in nearby Manciet, and went on long walks with them at weekends. There was food served up after the walks in various village halls in Gers. At one of these the woman exactly opposite me, said suddenly: 'You won't remember me, but you're John, aren't you. Do you remember when- in the Architect's where we worked together- we hid all those prints of the drawings that we'd printed and weren't weren't wanted....' Of course it was Lyn; and as with Jeremy she had been planted, with her husband, in an obscure village venue, exactly opposite me around 30 years after we had last met. I experience coincidences regularly, and see them as part of the serendipity that often comes to intervene in any research I, or others, choose to undertake. I also see coincidences as confirmation that one is on the right coordinate, at the right time- at the right intersection of the path of your fate. This, one can, if so desired, tie up to the Muslim saying: 'All roads lead to God'.