On our recent visit to London, we were house sitting for friends in a quiet little Muse street tucked away behind the V&A. It was another world- so quiet.
As we had been rushing around a lot, we decided to have a quiet day & enjoy the luxury of being spitting distance from both the Natural History Museum & the Science Museum. So later in the afternoon we popped out & went into the Science Museum. We made a beeline for the 'interactive room' whereupon my children busied themselves with a crane & shovel contraption, essentially bailing sand ad infinitum. The sort of thing you can find in several playgrounds.
As I was observing various children participating in this & secretly hoping my son wouldn't get too bossy about who did what & who wasn't pulling their weight, a voice behind me said, "Don't I know you from somewhere?"
I turned round and immediately recognised the woman.
"Yes." I said, "You taught at my son's school in Sri Lanka, & I did substitute teaching there."
That was 2 1/2 years ago already. We had a nice chat & catch up and then she said,
"So are you based in London now?"
"No, Albania. What about you? London?" I replied.
"No, Thailand."
Global nomads whose paths intersect for 10 minutes at 5p.m on a Sunday afternoon in the summer. You know the cliche, small...... etc
So what is your strangest coinicidence or unlikeliest meeting?
When a friend & I were Inter-railing round Europe, we met Uni friends in several places/countries, but we weren't surprised; we were on a European tourist trail, seeing the sights. I did once bump into an Oxford friend at the top of the Empire State building (again at 5p.m) one random Autumn Tuesday. That struck me as quite a coincidence.
And of course when I moved to Albania thinking I would know no one in such an obscure country, one of my closest Oxford friends, who lived 5 minutes from my house, had an au pair, who used to babysit for us occasionally. I now discovered (to my shame I hadn't realised) she was Albanian & lives in Tirana. And a fellow English teacher at the school I taught in, in a little market town in Oxfordshire, whose desk was next to mine in our department, also turned out to be working in Tirana.
So go on, tell me yours..........
