Living in Same Property, plus others

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understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

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Unexpected meeting in Spain- Just after I left school in 1960 I went to Spain with seven others from my Scout Troop in a minibus. After touring across France and Spain we arrived in Alicante. When walking down the main plaza we bumped into two school colleagues, Tommy and Helen Jenkins. This was when few English people holidayed in Spain . Living in the same Property- This covers two coincidences concerning a flat in a large house ( 8, The Drive Walthamstow) my wife and I lived in when we were first married in 1968. a) Just after we moved in my mother told us that it was a house that they had also lived in for a while in between the wars. There was no previous discussion of where we were looking as my parents had been in New Zealand the previous 9 months. b) In the 1980's we went on a Flotilla sailing holiday to Greece. We discovered that the New Zealand skipper of the fleet, when he was in London, had also lived for a time in the same attic flat with the same strange landord. Unexpected meeting in Australia In 2003 my wife and I spent 3 months in Australia touring around in a hire car with no particular itinerary. On 28th Jan, my wife's birthday. we were in Sydney watching a free didgeredoo concert in a small theatre on the harbourside when who should walk in but a friend from my sailing club back in the UK. She was visiting her son in Bondi for a few weeks and had just popped in Sydney harbour to while away the time. Unexpected meeting in New Zealand. This concernes my good friend Peter who had spent a few years sailing his catamaran from the UK to New Zealand. He had hired a car for a tour of NZ and had pulled into a dusty carpark at a beauty spot and sent dust over two pedestrians. He went to appologise and found out they were British. Strangely they came from the same part of the UK as himself and then found they they both knew, quite well, Eric. (note they are both a bit eccentric and are memorable). Eric was my good friend from the Scouts and had also been on the Spanish Scout trip. Doug and Lesley Eyles
Total votes: 406
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 09:23:38 +0000Coincidence ID:3676