Odd things that have happened to you

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buggi

Bird Saviour
Location
Solihull
I once phoned my mum and chatted to her for about 10 mins about this and that... And then said "anyway, the reason i called was to ask if those sandwiches are for me or dad"
"what sandwiches?"
"the ones in the fridge"
"for your dad?"
"yea, for me or dad?"
"who is this?"...

turns out i'd been chatting to some random woman for 10 mins. Apparently i sounded just like her daughter. Apparently she sounded just like my mum... And we had quite a lot in common... Parallel lives.
 

classic33

Leg End Member
Holyhead, mid-eighties. Fit whilst waiting for the ferry. Quiet the last I remembered, next thing I'm in the back of an ambulance with two paramedics trying to insert a needle in my arm. Concerned over the colour of my left arm. Came to/round quicker than expected, signed the paperwork saying I didn't want to go hospital. Out the back of the ambulance & back into the terminal. To the amazement of two female nurses & one male nurse. They'd jumped in and helped when they realised what was happenning & thought I'd be on my way to hospital.
Liverpool, late-eighties .
Having boarded the ferry, last thing remembered is boarding the ferry proper. Next thing I'm on the floor near the check-in desk. Turned out that a group of Japanese doctors, who'd decided on boarding on foot whilst their minibus went on the car deck, were right behind when I had a fit just after boarding. Treated me for the fit.
 

PaulB

Legendary Member
Location
Colne
Beyonce Knowles came to call for me and sat in my house for about fifteen minutes! My wife answered a knock at the front door and there stood Beyonce who asked if I could come and play out. My wife told her I wasn't in but I would be back soon and asked her if she'd mind waiting. Beyonce kept looking at her watch and told her she had to pick up her dry cleaning before the shop shut or she'd have nowt to wear to go up Colne that night. She left it as late as poss before she left and rushed to catch the last bus but promised she'd come back another time. If I'd have only known she'd promised to lezz up my missis before graciously allowing me to satiate my passions on her, I'd have cut my bike ride a bit shorter and got back earlier. We've got some blue pop in for her in case she comes back again. Or Kelly Brook; she's been promising she'd call round for ages now. Mind you, that's not odd, as such, more....infrequent.
 

Mad Doug Biker

Just a damaged guy.
Location
Craggy Island
Beyonce Knowles came to call for me and sat in my house for about fifteen minutes! My wife answered a knock at the front door and there stood Beyonce who asked if I could come and play out. My wife told her I wasn't in but I would be back soon and asked her if she'd mind waiting. Beyonce kept looking at her watch and told her she had to pick up her dry cleaning before the shop shut or she'd have nowt to wear to go up Colne that night. She left it as late as poss before she left and rushed to catch the last bus but promised she'd come back another time. If I'd have only known she'd promised to lezz up my missis before graciously allowing me to satiate my passions on her, I'd have cut my bike ride a bit shorter and got back earlier. We've got some blue pop in for her in case she comes back again. Or Kelly Brook; she's been promising she'd call round for ages now. Mind you, that's not odd, as such, more....infrequent.

Now 'fess up, that was actually a dream, wasn't it? :laugh:
 

vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
I rang my mate in Harrogate and the phone was answered by Whitney Houston who was baby sitting for him and his wife. She failed to convince me that she was Whitney Houston - why the hell should she be in Harrogate baby sitting? I was convinced that it was an elaborate wind up. My pal was notorious for high jinx.

My mate put me right a few days later. His wife was a session musician - much more accomplished than they admitted to and she'd done a fair bit of session work for Ms Houston and they forged a strong friendship. If Whitney was in the UK and was at a loose end she'd stay with my friends. On the night that I'd rang she'd sent them out for a meal to have a break from the kids.

Amazing.
 

TheDoctor

Europe Endless
Moderator
Location
The TerrorVortex
Next to that my one sounds a bit tame.
I sold a bike to a work colleague. A few months later I noticed this bike chained to our fence at work - but on the outside.
Odd, thought I. So I asked him.
He confessed that the bike had been stolen from his garden a week beforehand, and he hadn't told me. So I wielded our finest pair of bolt croppers, and then locked the bike up on our side of the fence.
The thief had loosened off the seat post, which had been seized for a decade. So that was nice.

TL;DR - The worlds unluckiest bike thief stole a bike and locked it where its owner works.
 

goo_mason

Champion barbed-wire hurdler
Location
Leith, Edinburgh
On the way home from Slovenia in the 90s, we caught a connecting flight from Manchester back to Edinburgh. and ended up chatting to the older couple sitting next to us on the plane. They mentioned they were on their way back from a cruise in the US, and I told them that my sister worked for Carnival and my folks would be on their way back from a cruise that day too. "Oh yes - we were on a Carnival Cruise!", she said. "Not sailing out of New Oreans?", I asked. "Yes!" I told her that my folks were probably on the same cruise and she said "They wouldn't be called Alan and Helen, would they?" Turned out that they'd befriended my folks during the cruise!

What are the chances of being on the same flight and sitting beside two people who'd somehow met and befriended your parents out of the many hundreds of passengers on one of those city-sized cruise ships in the US?

It's a small world, eh?
 

EltonFrog

Legendary Member
I have just remembered another strange but true story.

When I was single and a gad aout town and about 12 years before I met the current Mrs P I used to have a advert in the classified section in the weekly paper, The Stage And Television today, I placed the advert for one month and with it there was passport sized photograph. The advert never amounted to anything and was a complete waste of money.

About thirteen years later, my wife was sorting out some old stuff of hers that her parents took out of thier loft, prior to going to the dump, and amongst the old records, diaries and what not were two old copies of the The Stage, both of them with my advert in it.
 

vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
About ten years ago we booked a family holiday in Cornwall and I was going to do LEJOG immediately afterwards. The family who lived next door to the holiday let were very friendly and the husband was a keen cyclist who had done LEJOG and came out with me on a couple of rides. During one of the rides he discovered that I was a teacher in Bradford and said 'I don't suppose you know my neice - she's an art teacher in Bradford?'

She turned out to be a colleague.

I took it to be a good omen. It wasn't. I bailed out near Penistone with a couple of broken spokes and three days of torrential rain forecast.
 

Ravelin

Active Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
1) In my early 20s (seems so long ago now) I went for a holiday to Rhodes with a mate. At the start of the second week on the beach we were walking back from getting some refreshments when I heard my name called. After a bit of confusion, especially since I didn't have my glasses on, there was a girl who had been in the same year at school as us.

2) A few years later I was working in the NW of England but I'd got an interview for a job back home in Scotland. The interview was on a Wednesday at the end of October I think, so I'd combined the need to be in Scotland with a visit to my parents. To kill the time on the day before the interview I'd gone for a walk up a Munro (Scottish hill > 3000ft for those not in the know) to the West of Loch Lomond. About 75% of the way up I could see another walker coming down in the distance. As he got closer I began to think he looked familiar. It was a bloke I'd been in the T.A with in England and who'd left a couple of years earlier! He was the only person I met out on the hill that day too.

3) Another few years later, and now back living in Scotland as I'd got the job above, I got a letter out of the blue from another old friend I hadn't heard from for a long time. I'd moved house nearly 6mths earlier and my post re-direction was just about to run out so it was lucky shed decided to to write then and not a week or two later. She too was a friend from my days in the T.A. We'd joined at around the same time, with a few others, one of whom I was even friendlier with as he lived fairly close by. This guy I'd lost touch with when he joined the regular army.

Anyway, he'd eventually left the army and bumped into her and they were now living together. I went down for a weekend visit and was introduced to the guys sister, who was in the process of getting divorced. They got married a year or so later, and not long after that I married the guys sister. So now, about 10yrs after leaving England, and the T.A., both my brother-in-law and sister-in-law were people I'd joined up with over15yrs earlier. Unbeknown to me I'd also met my inlaws (and the wifes grandparents) years before I'd even set eyes on my wife.

I'm still happily married, with two step-kids and one non-step-kid, but unfortunately my brother and sister-in-law are currently in the process of divorcing.
 

gbb

Legendary Member
Location
Peterborough
Very early 70s as a kid, we lived on a mothballed airbase in Notts. 100 plus houses, but only maybe 1/3 of them had occupants. I used to deliver the newspapers.

Fast forward to the 90s, I now live in Peterborough and work with a crew of predominantly ex servicemen. During a lunchbreak the conversation meandered to where we used to live. Lo and behold, one of the guys I was working with lived at the airbase about the same time'ish.
Which number ?, I asked.
No 17...
Don't remember you..only remember a woman with a gammy leg who lived there.
'Yep, that was my wife'

:blush::blush: I can't believe I said that, even now.
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
On the way home from Slovenia in the 90s, we caught a connecting flight from Manchester back to Edinburgh. and ended up chatting to the older couple sitting next to us on the plane. They mentioned they were on their way back from a cruise in the US, and I told them that my sister worked for Carnival and my folks would be on their way back from a cruise that day too. "Oh yes - we were on a Carnival Cruise!", she said. "Not sailing out of New Oreans?", I asked. "Yes!" I told her that my folks were probably on the same cruise and she said "They wouldn't be called Alan and Helen, would they?" Turned out that they'd befriended my folks during the cruise!

What are the chances of being on the same flight and sitting beside two people who'd somehow met and befriended your parents out of the many hundreds of passengers on one of those city-sized cruise ships in the US?

It's a small world, eh?

When I still lived at home, my Mum and I did an evening class in tracing your family tree. At the first session, in the break, Mum got talking to one of the other chaps, and they discovered that they'd lived about 10 houses apart when she was about 5 and he was a couple of years older. Knowing this, they vaguely remembered each other.

We went back to class and told the tutor, amazed, and he said "Oh yes, that sort of thing happens all the time!"

It's the funny thing about coincidence - you only remember when it works. You never think of all the millions of times you turn out to have no connection whatsoever with someone!
 

Night Train

Maker of Things
A few years ago, when I was with an ex girlfriend, we found that we both lived in London at the same time and then that we were both at Greenham common at the same time in the late 80's.
However, she was at the protest camp outside the fencing, while I was inside as a roadie for the band that was entertaining the troops.:whistle:
 

Ludwig

Hopeless romantic
Location
Lissingdown
A few days ago on the teletext that West Ham were interesting in signing a Rumanian international footballer called Razvan Rat and the next day I found a dead rat in my basement. I buried the poor rat in the garden and wondered how he got in my basement as there are no holes where the creature would of got in. Another coincidence I had a few years ago was when I saw a Beatles tribute band at a steam fair and a few days later I walked passed Sir Paul Mccartney at the Tate Modern in London. Have any of you had any interesting coincidences.
 
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