Small world

[Nero]

Two or so weeks ago I worked with a freelancer who just so happens to be best friends with Daphne, the owner of Le Chandelier. Coincidence, eh?

A few years ago we ate in a restaurant in Las Vegas - of which there are very many - and ended up sitting next to someone we had worked with and knew very well. (He was with a woman, looked VERY uncomfortable at being spotted, and completely ignored us, even though we were about 5 feet apart - very strange.)

Any more coincidences? Nero

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

I mentioned it somewhere else but the weirdest ED coincidence I had was in Prenton, the Wirral. Popped into a kebab shop and the owner used to work in Lordship Lane!

[Michael Palaeologus]

Mentioned this one before, but:

Spring a few years ago - was in Brussels on business. Sat in restaurant on my own, so people watching. In walked a man-mountain in bush shorts, shirt and hat - looked like a right pillock, but on a mammoth scale. Not to be forgotten.

Late Autumn same year - stood in a "line" for the Backdraft ride in Universal Studios, Los Angeles, turned round and the man-mountain was stood behid me - still looked like a mammoth pillock, but pinker.

Spooky.

[TillieTrotter]

Last year I was shopping in my local coop in Tuscany when a little boy said "scuse me lady are you Greg's mum?". Twas a little lad from my son's school.

[Nero]

Last year I was shopping in my local coop in Tuscany

Shouldn't this be on the 'you know when ED is going upmarket' thread? Nero

[Michael Palaeologus]

I too have shopped in the Tuscan Co-op.

[mockney piers]

*gasps* small world...so have I.

[lozzyloz]

What is it with Tucany? I nearly ran over someone I'd met in Talinn on the way to shopping at the coop in Pienza!

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

I stayed in Belgium in 2000 and got to know an English girl, who had lived in Streatham. We didn't keep in touch but I often wondered how she was getting on. Two weeks ago I went to a friend's party in Hampstead and met a woman who was talking about her friend who had lived in Belgium, and it turned out is was the same girl and she now lived in East London. Then my best mate turned up at the party (I'd invited her) and it turned out that when she first came to London, her and this woman who knew the girl from Belgium had been good squat mates about 15 years previously. What a small world!

[Ultraconsultancy]

I used to have a chum who had retired from being a Rebus-style detective in Glasgow, and gave over the rest of his life to a previously under-nourished love of the opera and classical music. Earlier this year I was singing at the Royal Festival Hall, collected my randomised ticket from the choir assistant, went to my numbered seat, and saw that it was the one dedicated and paid for by my detective chum.

Ultraconsultancy

[LostThePlot]

In the early 90's I met a woman, about 10 years older than me, in London, and got on famously with her, as she came from very near my home in the North East. Anyway, one thing lead to another and, well....we go on VERY famously.

We started seeing each other and then I mentioned her to my mum, saying where she was from and so on... Mum however sounded a bit unsure about this (Cares about her son I thought) anyhoo....two days later I get a call from my mum telling me to stop seeing this woman, and explained that she was actually my father's oldest daughter from his previous marriage.....(

It was a bit scary at the time...but we look back and laugh about it now...

[Keef]

Mrs Keef was doing a month placement in Bordeaux during her teacher training, and I went to visit for a weekend. I was told to look out for this bloke on the plane who was going to meet his wife who was there with Mrs Keef.

Anyway, I met this guy and we went for a beer whilst waiting for the girls, and it turned out his best mate went out with the daughter of one of my colleagues. I thought that was pretty weird.

[mockney piers]

My mate was on bondai beach on his travels, entertaining a group of backpackers with his guitar, and they were all telling stories. He got on to one about how on a school trip an old friend was busting for the loo and ended up peeing herself in front of everyone, which she never lived down, but she'd moved away a few years back.

A girl turns round from the next group/campfire along on the beach and says, 'you're rob aren't you, I'm kirsty'. It was the girl who'd peed her pants!!

[barrymarshall]

The other month I was waiting one night/early morning at a bus stop on Upper Street in Islington and struck up a conversation with a couple stood next to me. I recognised that the guy was from Glasgow from his accent. He'd come down to London with his girlfriend. "I have some friends up there", I said, "one of them is in a band, dunno if you've heard of them ..." Turns out not only had he heard ofthe band, but regularly went to gigs with my mate and that he was well-known as a local legend.

[SeanMacGabhann]

My brother still maintains that the first time he spent on a kibbutz was one of the best years he had.

In any case, a couple of years ago he came with me to the quiz at the CPT and I noticed he kept checking out a girl on another table, in a quizzical sort of way

Turns out she was at the same kibbutz in the same year but they wouldn't believe it was the other person in the CPT

[Nero]

Another one. We went to Oz and toured Uluru in a small group. A few years later one of the girls we met emailed me, saying she'd thought she'd thought she'd seen us on a train in Italy but wasn't entirely sure it was us. She told me the dates and times and location, and it was us. Spooky-looky. Nero

[mockney piers]

When I was a youngster in Corfu we lost one of our number as the evening progressed.

Very wee hours of the morning back at the flat there was a knock at the door and some girls we knew well from Letchworth were there holding our very bedraggled and vomit stained friend up between them.

Seems they'd passed a collapsed body half hidden down an alley. One thought they should do something, and on closer inspection it turned out to be Jamie. Very surprised they cleaned him up a bit and managed to keep hum alert long enough to navigate him to the flat.

Neither group had any idea the other one was in corfu at the same time.

[Brendan]

There?s a girl who works in our HR department whose older brother was my best mate?s roommate at university back in South Africa some 11 years ago now.

She recognised my name and sent me an e-mail asking if I was the Brendan she though I was. I confirmed and it turned out that she knows all this stuff about me like who I went out with, where I used to go out, what car I drove etc.

I?m not sure whether to be flattered or freaked out.

[LostThePlot]

LostThePlot Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> It was a bit scary at the time...but we look back

> and laugh about it now...

But joking aside.....

I Interailed in 1991, and got a Vaporetta (Sp??) to the hostel in Venice. As i stepped off the boat an english girl said "They are closed, they are being rebuilt, so there are no beds"

"Oh well" I replied, and go and see anyway...

3 weeks later I'm walking out of the large cathedral in Vienna and the same girl walks past me and says "I told you they didn't have any beds...." made I larf....

[Polly D]

My brother and his wife had a baby in 2001. At the time I was in my final year at uni in Sheffield and was living with 3 Spanish friends, two of whom were brother and sister. When my brother rang to say they were calling the baby Elias, I mentioned that the brother and sister who I lived with also had a brother (and a nephew) called Elias. Turns out, their older brother had also been to Sheffield (Erasmus) and had lived in the same halls as my brother ten years before that and they knew each other.

And then, Chantoozie from this 'ere forum sang at our wedding recently. When chatting one eve in the Plough, we both mentioned Sheffield and she had also lived in the same hall, the same year as my brother. Maybe she knew Elias (I) as well ...