Winter Bank an astonishing modern house

I live in Marlow, Bucks. My wife’s now "getting-on-a-bit" cousin, Chris, lived nearby for 40 years in an upside-down house on a lovely site by the Thames in Cookham Dean called ‘Winter Bank’. Four or five years ago a man appeared at Chris’s front door and said that he wanted to buy Chris’s house. Since he and his wife were thinking of moving, after a small negotiation they agreed to sell, furniture and all. The new owner demolished the existing house and built an astonishing modern house – all glass and heat pumps. In November 2010 I was a trustee of my former company’s pension fund. I was travelling in a taxi with the CEO of the pension fund’s investment company from central London to Hounslow for a meeting. As we chatted during the journey, the CEO, Michelle, mentioned that she thought that I Iived in Marlow and that the previous weekend she had visited a startling new house on the Thames in Cookham Dean which had been recently built by a friend of hers as a holiday home. I asked Michelle if the name of the house was ‘Winterbank’ and she, astonished, said it was. So this became my coincidence story. However, in autumn 2011, my wife and I attended a lunch organised by the Aden Dinner Club at the Royal Overseas League. I had worked for BP many years ago in Aden and at a public lecture had bumped into an old colleague from BP Aden whom I had not seen since 1968. He was Secretary of the Aden Dinner Club and suggested that we came to last year’s Annual Lunch. At the lunch I sat next to a woman called Juliet who was the companion of one of the former BP Aden employees. I have not met her before or since. We started talking. When she found out that I lived in Marlow, she asked me if I had seen this amazing new house that one of her architect friends had designed for his best friend on the banks of the Thames in Cookham Dean. And I said: “Is it called ‘Winter Bank’?” It was. The rest of the lunch was spent talking about amazing coincidences and I have bored people with the story ever since!