Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Two years ago in September we were holidaying in Ontario, Canada, at the house of a friend. We were given the loan of his car to go shopping and had parked the car in a carpark downtown when we were approached by a somewhat unsteady Canadian who was pointing at the numberplate on the front of the car: "B'deck!" he exclaims, "Tha's B'deck!" This meant nothing to us, so we asked him to explain. The plate was BDK, signifying that it was originally plated in Baddeck, Nova Scotia. "Surely you know of Baddeck.....the place where John Logie Baird built his house and transmitted across the Atlantic?" We had not heard of this place and had forgotten about JLB. Perhaps, by the look of his out of town clothes this gentleman was from Nova Scotia and was a bit homesick. Anyway we had a laugh over it and went our separate ways. Later that day I emailed my daughter-in-law back in Scotland, telling her of the encounter. I thought it would be of interest to her because she had spent some time in Nova Scotia. Straightway she emailed back saying that by an amazing coincidence she had just been helping her son with a homework assignment he had been given by the school: it was a piece of research and writing on John Logie Baird's house in Baddeck, Nova Scotia.

I worked on a help desk in a very busy financial call centre and was one of about sixty staff that took calls from customers, branches and other call centres about ISA's and Bonds. During 2010's busiest time of year (peak season) we were struggling to answer all of the calls often meaning that queues of frustrated customers 300 deep would be waiting for a very long time to talk to an advisor. At this time I remember talking to a Mr Fletcher. He wanted to discuss both his and his wife's accounts but he knew that due to financial regulations I wouldn't be able to talk to him about his wife's accounts unless she was with him and I could ask her some security questions. After i dealt with Mr Fletchers query he told me that his wife was at work and would call sometime that day. The very next call I took was from Mrs Fletcher! This, given that we were over run with calls and of all the advisors she should come through to me straight after I had been talking to her husband to say the least blew my mind. As soon as I found out her name I told her conveying a large amount of excitement that I had just been talking to her husband. Mrs Fletcher was baffled by this as she didn't think her husband had any ISA's. Feeling a bit worried that I had, in my consternation, let slip some confidential information relating to someone else's account I quickly realised after looking at her details that she was an entirely different Mrs Fletcher. This Mrs Fletcher seemed very unimpressed after I had explained how incredibly unusual this was so I buried my amazement and carried on with her entirely unrelated call. So as the saying goes 'what are the chances of that happening'?

Whilst in Somerset some years ago I called in for fuel at a local village petrol station. This was in the days when you had to sign when paying by credit card. The previous customer had left his payment slip in the machine and his name was identical to mine.

In the summer of 1999, I attended the Cambridge Folk Festival with some friends. I was sitting on the grass listening to some music when I overheard two young Frenchmen chatting. Since I'd just finished my French A-level and had also been to France a lot, I thought this was a good opportunity to practise my French. We got chatting and I gave out a flyer to volunteer in an Oxfam shop, which I was managing at the time. One of the young men took a liking to me and came to volunteer every day the following week and even baked me some fairy cakes. When he went back to France, we kept in touch as penpals, writing letters to improve our language. This was the start of a ten-year friendship. Two or three years later, he visited me in Oxford, where I was studying. I was writing an email one afternoon, and he leant over, reading it thoughtfully. My grandmother's name, Kiki, had been mentioned in the email. He then started asking me questions about her. Did she live in London? Yes. South East? Yes. Did she rent out rooms? Yes. Did she have a long-term Belgian tenant? Yes. Did she live on Lowther Hill? Yes! Remarkably, it turned out that my French friend had stayed next door to my grandmother with his Belgian PhD supervisor for the whole summer of 1998, the year before he met me at random among throngs of people at the Cambridge Folk Festival. I took this as some kind of fateful message, and soon we started a short affair. Sadly, the coincidence did not mean we were each others' destiny. Over the years our friendship was punctured by little flings and miserable recriminations. We no longer keep in touch, but I'll always remember this as the most extraordinary coincidence of my life. Jane ps I hope this young Frenchman is not involved in this project, by coincidence, as he had a job as a mathematician at Cambridge some years ago! Sorry if you're reading this hun, but I'm sure you'll agree none of it is untrue.