What examples do you have of "it's a small world"?

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I worked in city finance in London for two decades, I came across lots of people in my dozen or so different roles in that time.

I now work in a completely different sector in a different city.

Today I sent an email to a company in a third unrelated industry in Newcastle and the reply came from someone I worked with in London 20 years ago.

It blew my mind but are these coincidences more common than we think, degrees of separation etc?

I worked in London and had to organise someone to temporarily cover someone in my team. The person recruited turned out to be living in the same flat I'd been renting 3 years previously.

There was also a guy in my uni class who's dad was in my dad's class at a grammar school, hundreds of miles away in the 50s. We were born quite late on in our dad's lives too so the chances were ridiculously slim for a class of 14 lads from the NE.

On holiday in Singapore. Getting off the hotel shuttle bus on Orchard Road. Waiting to get on was someone I used to work with.

@middleclassproblem so awkward!! I emailed my exSIL (who was married to my eH brother) and she said I should tell her but be careful what I said . His family is a little strange and I don’t want them knowing anything about my life or family

When I was a child we went on a family holiday to a European country. Sitting on the beach and heard an English voice, it was a neighbour from our street.

FIL and my dad were best friends at school. They hadn't seen each other for 30+ years and it wasn't until DH and I had been together for three months before we realised they might know each other.

Also!!! After watching The Last Post? I wanted to find out a bit more about Aden in the 60s as my parents went there when first married. Found a biography by a forced guy and picked it up on Amazon.

There were HUGE (pages and pages) of accounts in there about my mum and dad, unseen photos and all sorts as my dad was his commanding officer.

It even talked about my mum finding out she was expecting my dsis and how excited she was.

My mum had been dead for about ten years and it was like finding this absolutely fantastic treasure into her and her works I never knew.

And he slagged off my dad's driving which was hilarious. I ended up reaching out to the author and we had done wonderful exchanges.

Went on honeymoon to an African country and one of the holiday reps in our hotel was someone I had worked with the previous year.

I grew up in a small village in South West of England.
At 27 I moved to a very tiny and rural village in the Scottish highlands.
My then nextdoor neighbours daughter got married to a lad from the village I grew up in!!
2 tiny places with very low population and opposite ends of the UK!

Used to work with a woman who I already knew slightly because I'd been to school with her DH. Turns out she was my fiance's (now DW) best mate when she was at school.

This was in the City BTW, not a small town or village.

I went to a smallish school in a smallish rural village. On my honeymoon (abroad - a small island) new hubby and I bump into a guy I went to school with.😳 Then.... a few years later I am training some customers about 300 miles from where I live. One of the customers asks me where I am from. I tell him very vaguely and he says “ is that near....”and says the exact village name I grew up in. I say “Yes” and he says “did you go to school with...” and he names a girl who was a year older than me at school. I tell him this and he says “She’s my ex- wife - don’t tell her I work here” 🙀

DD was working in New York, came home for Christmas and came to a family reunion that included my cousin's girlfriend, who lives in New York.

They talked about where DD lived and discovered that a few years before, cousin's girlfriend had lived in the apartment across the corridor from where DD was living

I live in a town of 25k people, my aunt lives 150 miles away. She wrote to me once (was about 20 years ago when people still wrote to each other) to say her step daughter was getting married to a man who was from my town and wondered if I knew him. Yep he was my best friends ex and father of her eldest child.

On my honeymoon with my ex I heard someone call my name (unusual ) turned around and it was a girl I worked with 5 years before. Also many many years ago we went on a day trip to the Isle of Man from Llandudno and we went to a cafe for milkshake. The woman that served us had been in the army with my Mum at least 10 years before. She hovered then asked her name (my Mum has a distinctive nose)

When I worked for a large company in London (1700 employees) I used to talk to a girl on fag breaks every day. One Christmas we were talking about going home and found out that only had we both been to the same small, rural school but she was also my best friend's sister's best friend. We both vaguely remembered each other as we'd often been at our friends' house at the same time but only as "X's sister's friend" as we hadn't taken much notice of each other at the time.

We also met 3 people from school and work in Cornwall last summer, but I guess that's not that much of a coincidence in August in St Ives.

I took my two youngest to London for a few days in the summer we live near Manchester we were walking round the M&M shop when I heard 'hello Miss' two pupils from school in there shopping too.

Every time I go to Tintagel for a day trip I meet someone I know. I live nowhere near Tintagel and neither do they. We go there roughly every ten years.

Should say always a different someone but always a person who we have lost touch with.

My cousin married the son of a casual teacher at my high school.
Several years later, I move to the other side of the country (remote northern Australia), and get a job as a teacher's aide in a local school. Guess who was teaching at this school? My cousin's husband's uncle.
I became really good friends with his wife.

After my mum died I was talking to a woman at work. She had led quite a nomadic life and had ended up living in our south coast town. I'd been talking about the journey to the crematorium and she said "Yes, when my Granny died it took ages to get to Ayr Crematorium". It turned out that her dad had been brought up in the (semi detached) bungalow next to my cousin's husband, and my cousin was her granny's hairdresser.

I knew someone who went back packing in Australia after his fiancée left him for somebody else. At a hostel in Sydney he met another man from England. He got talking to him and asked him where he was from. The man named the next village to where he lived. John said "I'm from B* " And the bloke said "That's why I'm over here. Do you know Sue? I had a fling with her and I heard her fiancé wasn't too pleased with me, so I thought I'd better get away for a while!". He was horrified when John introduced himself as said fiancé! They ended up agreeing that John had actually had a lucky escape!

I was on holiday in Sorrento with my mum. We were sat having a coffee outside a cafe when a friend of mine walked past.
On holiday with my parents in France - walking up lighthouse steps and banged into friends coming down.
Used to live in New Zealand but now live in the U.K. got chatting to a kiwi guy at work - turned out we'd both worked at the same place at the same time in NZ but never met until recently in the U.K.

My parents were visiting us for a week in Rome . We decided to go sightseeing in the city centre. I didn’t really want to go AGAIN as I was about 500 weeks pregnant but thought the walking would do me good and might get labour started. Down a side street in Trastevere, in a tiny restaurant, we bumped into my best friend from England with a bloke who was not her husband.

Labour started on way home and baby born that night. :-)