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    Small world

    My new girlfriend's sister, I found out today, recently sold her house to someone I directly manage at work.

    Not a hugely small world, I suppose, but even so, there are knocking on for 100,000 people living in the Preston and Fylde area, so for me to be so closely related to two people involved in such a transaction is pretty long odds.

    Yours?

    #2
    Small world

    One of my mates from school works at a rival financial newspaper. I'm not sure that counts, though.

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      #3
      Small world

      After England beat Argentina in the World Cup, I ended up getting rather drunk, and ended up in Costa Dorada on Hanway Street. I got chatting to a woman (I use chatting in the sense of she was lucid, I was slurring with intent); she asked what I did, I told her, and she said whether I knew x, who she had bought her house off from 1 year earlier, who was my work colleague.

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        #4
        Small world

        1993: first day at university in Scotland, and I find myself sitting next to my best friend from junior school in Surrey (whose family had moved to Poland in 1986).

        1998: backpacking in Australia, I take a month's temp job at a Canadian investment bank in Sydney. The head of the dealing room turns out to be part of a family who owned the Red Lion in Billericay, the first pub my parents ever took me to.

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          #5
          Small world

          I was working in the public library in Farnham - my first job. I was on desk duty. An oldish couple approached the desk and hesitantly asked:

          "Excuse me - do you know Farnham fairly well?" to which I answered yes.

          "Oh good - do you think you could give us directions to somewhere? We've just driven down from Scotland, you see."

          Sure.

          "We're looking for an area called Upper Hale."

          Okay, it's.... Is there anywhere in Hale you're looking for, in particular?

          "Well... yes - do you happen to know a Nutshell Lane?"

          Yes, it's.... Errr... what number is it you're looking for? I know that road pretty well.

          "Ummm... it's No.2"

          Ohmygod! That's... that's where my girlfriend lives! You must be related to Dot & Bill.

          "Yes! I'm Bill's sister." (Cue much astonished chatting, concluding with "probably see you tonight, then!")

          So - a relative of one of my girlfriend's grandparents (with whom she lived) had travelled over 400 miles and the first person they randomly ask for directions happens to visit the very house they're looking for several times a week! Now just how unlikely and spooky is that?! I still can't get my head round that one, over 20 years later.

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            #6
            Small world

            In a sleeper from Vienna to Bucharest and engaging the Romanians I shared the compartment with in coversation only to discover that one of them was the godfather at a friend of the GLW's and mine's first wedding.

            Meeting up for a couples drinkies session with the Dutch guy who runs rsssf in Bucharest one Christmas and finding that his wife was in the same class as the GLW in Bucharest's Maths & Physics High School number 4.

            Doing an interview with the editor of Pro Sport magazine in Romania with a view to doing an article on Moldovan football for WSC and establishing that he knew the GLW from when their families both lived in the Romanian embassy in Copenhagen in the late 70s.

            Hearing Romanian spoken at New Malden train station about ten years ago and introducing myself to the women chatting. Eventually arranged to all meet up, them, me and the GLW, whereupon we learnt that one of the women had been at school in Pitesti with the GLW's uncle Dan.

            As for ones that aren't defined by the fact that Bucharest seems to be a village with a population of 2 million, I bumped into an old schoolmate at a Nick Cave concert in Briston Academy about 5 years ago. Less impressive, I'm sure you'll agree.

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              #7
              Small world

              In the Uruguayan National History Museum in Montevideo, January 2007, my (then) girlfriend and I were looking round an exhibition on Columbus and I was explaining that what the Spanish-speaking world never mentions, is that Columbus never landed on mainland America, and that the John Cabot - who sailed from Bristol - did do. My (then) girlfriend, being a good patriotic member of the Hispanophone world, was arguing.

              A gentleman standing behind her, who I would guess was about ten years older than my parents, asked whether he could butt in and put her straight, saying exactly what I'd just been telling her, and concluding with '...and I know this because Cabot sailed from Bristol, which is where I'm from.'

              I told him I was as well, we chatted for a couple of minutes and it transpired that he had taught P.E. to one of the men who taught me P.E. at secondary school - at the same secondary school, in fact. And he used to be best mates with a chap who'd recently died, but was president of our village rugby club (not the village the school is in, but the village I live in) - which my dad is an honorary vice-president of.

              In a museum in Montevideo. Which is in Uruguay. Which is a place no-one apart from Uruguayans and Argentines goes to.

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                #8
                Small world

                Chatting with a Croatian-Australian at the next table at a restaurant in Prague, and realisng we'd gone to the same (now closed) high school in Sydney.

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                  #9
                  Small world

                  A couple of years ago, my uncle and aunt went to Hayling Island for the weekend. When they checked in to their hotel, the receptionist looked puzzled and told them that their room had already been taken half an hour ago.

                  After much confusion, it turned out that the people in the room were another couple with the same initials and (not particularly common) surname as my uncle, who were also down for the weekend from Leigh-on-Sea. In fact, they only lived a couple of streets away and had been customers in my uncle's shop.

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                    #10
                    Small world

                    Were they Master Butchers?

                    [Carter USM earworm/]

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                      #11
                      Small world

                      I was in Dalyan in Turkey which at the time (12 or so years ago) was still fairly new to tourism.
                      Sitting in a bar one night, I lost at backgammon and said in my finest Homer voice "D'oh!"
                      "Simpsons eh?" said the chap sitting with his girlfriend a table along. We got chatting and discovered that the chaps girlfriend was the sister of a friend of mine from 6th form college.
                      To add weirdness to injury the next day by the pool I saw a bloke from England listening to the cricket (England vs Windies) on a radio. I asked him the score and during a brief holiday chat (where are you from etc.) I found out that he was from Frimley, where I worked. His wife was a nurse at Frimley park hospital. then she came back with drinks and said hello. She was one of my regular customers at Oddbins.

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                        #12
                        Small world

                        Walking up the steps at one of the Angkor temples, and a woman walking down stops as we meet in the middle. It's Susie, who I was at school and university with but hadn't seen for about 8 years. A few days later going round a market in Bangkok and I spot Lucy who I also was at school with. And I had seen her recently because she lived with a couple that I met entirely separately. And they then got married and at their wedding there was Martin that I was at college with. OK the second half is lame and even the first can probably be explained by the whole posh girls-tourism in Asia type thing.

                        Also when I worked in a cinema in cambridge I was talking to someone else who worked there and it turned out her parents are best friends with my aunt's next door neighbours. This one sounds even less impressive now I write it down.

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                          #13
                          Small world

                          Browsing in an indie rekkid store in downtown Hiroshima and the bloke next to me flicks through some CDs and pulls out a familiar-looking album - by my old band (no, I honestly hadn't put it at the front of the section, or written "Free Gold Bar With This Album" on the cover, etc.).

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                            #14
                            Small world

                            My wife and I threw a bit of a party back in April. We invited some of the people we'd met when we took a trip to Cuba late last year. As soon as they arrived, one of the men flew into the arms of the husband of one of my wife's work colleagues: many years ago they'd played in the same team at London Scottish.

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                              #15
                              Small world

                              I wish I had as good a memory for these sort of chance encounters as you lot seem to have. I do remember being at Monkey World in Dorset last year and bumping into someone I'd worked with at UCL ten years previously, and hadn't seen since.

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                                #16
                                Small world

                                I am *desperate* to go to Monkey World. I'm addicted to the TV programmes about it. You lucky thing. Was it great?

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                                  #17
                                  Small world

                                  one of the men flew into the arms of the husband of one of my wife's work colleagues
                                  That's Rugby players for you.

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                                    #18
                                    Small world

                                    Shall I do ours, Shorty Medlocke, or do you want to?

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                                      #19
                                      Small world

                                      Mumpo wrote:
                                      ...I do remember being at Monkey World in Dorset last year...
                                      For some reason this is making me chuckle.

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Small world

                                        Lyra wrote:
                                        I am *desperate* to go to Monkey World. I'm addicted to the TV programmes about it. You lucky thing. Was it great?
                                        Well, yeah. I mean, if it's primates you're after, it's the place to be. I might be doing the place a disservice but I don't recall there being any gorillas, which was disappointing. I don't go a bundle on chimps, the nasty little psychopaths, and it's pretty chimp-centric. I spent most of the time cooing over the orangutans.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          Small world

                                          Oh, you were a visitor, then, not one of the attractions? This detail was ambiguous from your first post.

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                                            #22
                                            Small world

                                            My sister, who works for a tv company, was asked to do a shoot from a house near Leeds. Where exactly, she asked. Garforth was the response. Small world she thought, as she was born there and spent the first 7 years of her life in Garforth. What road, she asked. Ashley Close, was the reply. That’s really spooky, she thought, that was the road we used to live in. What number house, she asked. Number 7 was the reply. And so it was that the house that she was to film in was the house that she and I had grown up in.

                                            Now, what are the chances of that? Well, we tried to work it out based on the number of houses in this country divided by the houses she’s lived in and concluded that it was about 4 million to one.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Small world

                                              Mumpo wrote:
                                              Lyra wrote:
                                              I am *desperate* to go to Monkey World. I'm addicted to the TV programmes about it. You lucky thing. Was it great?
                                              Well, yeah. I mean, if it's primates you're after, it's the place to be. I might be doing the place a disservice but I don't recall there being any gorillas, which was disappointing. I don't go a bundle on chimps, the nasty little psychopaths, and it's pretty chimp-centric. I spent most of the time cooing over the orangutans.
                                              Hold on a minute! They have orang-utans in Monkey World? Ooook. That's just asking for trouble.

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                Small world

                                                Mumpo wrote:
                                                Well, yeah. I mean, if it's primates you're after, it's the place to be. I might be doing the place a disservice but I don't recall there being any gorillas, which was disappointing. I don't go a bundle on chimps, the nasty little psychopaths, and it's pretty chimp-centric. I spent most of the time cooing over the orangutans.
                                                They don't have gorillas, yeah. But they have spider monkeys and squirrel monkeys and stump tailed macaques and my favourites, the woolly monkeys.

                                                I love the orang utans. The TV series really shows all the personalities of the animals they follow and the orangs just have this fantastic intelligence and gravity about them. And the people that work there come across as amazing. It's made me want to become a keeper at a place like that one day.

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  Small world

                                                  Chimps rock, you madman mumpo.

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