A picture is taken of me by a stranger. 3 years and 3000 miles later, that stranger and I are flatmates.

In 2005 I had just started University in Washington DC in America. Some of my friends and I attended the war protest that year, and because my friend was making a his own amateur comedy tv show, we decided to have a bit of a laugh and went downtown dressed up as "Pirates for Peace". By 2007 I decided that Washignton DC was not the place for me, and left to study at UCL in London. In 2008 I was living in student halls in London, and in the spring had a new flatmate who had been randomly assigned to my flat who was also from the States. Before coming to London she had lived in New York and went to Uni in Pennsylvania. We never were too close but would chat when we ran into each other in the kitchen or corridor about coursework and other day to day things. One day she came bursting into my room demanding to know whether or not I had been at the peace demonstration in Washington DC 2005, and if I had been dressed up as a pirate. It turns out she had been in Washington that day, had taken a picture of my friend and I, uploaded it to her comptuer, and forgotten all about it until that day, 3 years later, when the two of us had both chosen to move abroad, to study anthropology at UCL, had both been randomly assigned to the same student halls, in the very same 2 bedroom flat, and she had chosen for whatever reason to go through and delete old photos and happened to recognise me. It's a terrifyingly small world.