A WEEK IN ITALY

About thirty years ago we took one of two apartments at a remote farm in Tuscany for a couple of weeks. We arrived to find that the other apartment was occupied by people who had, until about 18 months previously, lived in the house opposite to us. In the intervening period we had lost contact. They had been at the farm for a week by then. They told us that they in their turn had been equally surprised to find, on arriving there, that the apartment that we were now occupying had been occupied during the previous week by a couple who had lived in the same street as ourselves until about two years before, with whom both we and our neighbours had been on good terms. When our neighbours left the next week I awoke from a particularly satisfactory lunch to find that they had been replaced by someone who had been in the same barristers' chambers as myself. It was no surprise in the circumstances. I should add that during the same holiday we met two members of my chambers at roughly the same place in Florence at different times on the same day during our first week at Tuscany.