Some coincidences take a long time

When I was around 15 or 16, I'd listen to Radio Luxembourg in the late evenings. I didn't care much for the music, but the news reports by an IRN reporter from El Salavador were gripping. A few years later, I met the love of my life, who, incidentally, lived in the house next door to the one I'd been born in and grew up in, although I'd moved away by then. One day, one of us raised how impactful listiening to the IRN El Salavador news reports by one particular news reporter had been, and the other said they too had listened to them and remembered them. Years later, in 1993, an American came to hire our edit suite and we connected. He invited us to become his camera crew and we travelled the world with him. We knew this American had been reporting for radio on the war in El Salavador, but thought no more of it as he was mostly based in the US. On a shoot with him at ITN News offices in London around 2006, the American talked about his time working for IRN...and my partner and I realised we'd been listening to this American's radio broadcasts all those years before. </p> <p>On filming trips in the 1990s, usually when driving, our American producer used to say to us 'when I get old, you guys are going to look after me'. We'd laugh and dismiss this as the American lived in America and we had no intention of moving to the US. Besides, the American had a wife and step family. By about 2007, the American's British born wife had relocated them to a small Dorset village, a long way from us. By 2011, this man's wife had divorced him and he was struggling on his own and soon after ended up in residential care with dementia, by then, he'd been abandoned by all, except us. He was still many miles from us, and we did what we could long distance, so I spent a lot of time pleading with the authorities to find a home a little closer to us so we could visit more regularly. He was moved further away. Then one day, the authorities felt the American needed to live in a secure environment as he was at risk. The only available place at the time....was in our town.