Bizarre coincidences

[bugbear]

I was having breakfast in a small hotel in the back streets of Bruge when I saw my dentist walk past.

BugBear

(no higher power was involved or harmed in the making of this cooincidence )

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I was at a bar counter at the national real ale festival in Ally Pally drinking a pint of Bass when a voice behind me said "quite good, but not so good as yours" - It was a bloke I'd served a pint to two months before in a pub in Truro.

 

[spinks]

Two from me. My Mum used to run an office in the town I live in but when she retired it closed, I subsequently bought the house I now live in (about 2 miles from Mums old office) and got myself set up with services, including a bt line. Mum was visiting one day and the phone rang and upon answering the person at the other end asked to speak to Christine...I duly handed the phone to Mum (for Christine was her name) and she chatted for about ten mins explaining that the office was now closed etc etc...Turns out I had been allocated her offices old phone number!!! The second one was just this week. We had a week in Snowdonia and on our first day climbed a small mountain (moel Hebog) got chatting to a couple of smashing chaps at the summit for half an hour and went our separate ways, 2 days later we walked up Snowdon (unplanned last minute thing) and sat atop the summit enjoying our lunch when the same pair of chaps sat down next to us to have their picnic!

 

[Graham Orm]

Two from me. My Mum used to run an office in the town I live in but when she retired it closed, I subsequently bought the house I now live in (about 2 miles from Mums old office) and got myself set up with services, including a bt line. Mum was visiting one day and the phone rang and upon answering the person at the other end asked to speak to Christine...I duly handed the phone to Mum (for Christine was her name) and she chatted for about ten mins explaining that the office was now closed etc etc...Turns out I had been allocated her offices old phone number!!! The second one was just this week. We had a week in Snowdonia and on our first day climbed a small mountain (moel Hebog) got chatting to a couple of smashing chaps at the summit for half an hour and went our separate ways, 2 days later we walked up Snowdon (unplanned last minute thing) and sat atop the summit enjoying our lunch when the same pair of chaps sat down next to us to have their picnic!

Incredible!

 

[SimonB]

My other half got gazumped by a complete stranger, who 10 years later became her sister-in-law.

Bit of a nerdy one this - used to install AIX servers, and we'd test the modem connection from our mobile phones. Couldn't understand why the password was not working. Double checked the phone number, found we had two digits switched, but we'd still connected to another AIX server, same version as well - that was a bit bizarre.

 

[steadyeddie]

A couple of years ago I was chatting to my wife in our local pub about an old workmate of mine, a guy called Rob. We worked together for a number of years before he got divorced and went to live in Devon about 20 years previously. As we were talking, Rob walked into the pub, he was back in Leicester visiting family. Naturally, we had chat about old times over a pint or two.

Dave

 

[rafezetter]

A few from me too: when I was about 7 we had a family move in next door (we were living in Surrey) and I got friendly with the older of the two boys; Neil Mcfarlane was his name, we moved out of the town a year or so later and I didn't see him again. When I was 12 I moved to a new boarding school in Sussex, which was not part of the "normal progression sequence" of private schools in Surrey as my Dad didn't like it, about a week or so in I was walking into assembly and saw a face I knew was familar - if a bit different - it was Neil Mcfarlane, who also remembered me, that was fairly bizarre we thought.

Whilst going to that school I went on a school skiing trip to Saas-Fee in Switzerland - 2nd to last day we were piling into the cable car to go up and I saw my cousin from Bristol in the car..... I didn't know he was going to be there and neither did he know I was there; he'd been skiing on the other side of the mountain, and the school party had decided to try this side as the passes covered the whole area, the look on our faces must have been a picture

When I was 19 and worked in London I used to go to Hyde Park on my days off as I liked to rollerskate there. One day I saw this dog (a black lab I think) running but with the lead slack and no-one who was obviously the owner nearby, so I caught up with the dog and grabbed the lead. While I started to roller back in the direction the dog came from, I heard a woman frantically yelling "AUSTIN, AUSTIN!" and whistling, which pretty much stopped me in my tracks and she came over to hug the dog, and took the lead - I asked if this was her dog she said yes and showed me the dogtag which said Austin (I hadn't thought to look) - I said it was a pretty unusual name for a dog and she said it was her favorite name from a book and I just laughed and said - "well that makes 7". She looked at me like I was a nutter so I said - "that's the 7th Austin I've met in my lifetime" - she was still looking at me weird so I said "Hi, my name's Austin" (which it is).