I used to have the most vivid deja vu as a child, which got even stronger in my teens but has gradually waned as I've aged. What has got stronger however, is my 'gut instinct'. The 2 most memorable examples both involve London Bridge, I seem to have some kind of spidey sense about the place. My DMum lives there, just off Borough High Street and when we lived in Kent, I'd visit regularly and often stay the night.
I always met my friend for drinks on Borough High Street on the last Friday of every month. We had a few favourite bars we'd go to, in the same order every time. Start in the slug and lettuce, on to katzenjammers, Blue eyed maid to watch the terrible karaoke, then belushis and finish the evening in St Christopher's. We were both smokers at the time, so sat outside even in the winter. It was something we'd been doing for years, but one Friday some years ago, I decided not to go. It wasn't because I felt unwell, but every time I started to think about what I was going to wear or what train to get, I started to sweat and felt shaky. Went to pick shoes out, felt shaky, picked up the hair straighteners, felt shaky. You get the idea.
I called my friend and told her I wasnt sure about going and she said 'oh how weird, I'm really not feeling it either'. If she'd have said she was looking forward to it, I probably would have just got on with it, but we agreed to leave it that month.
Next morning I woke up to the news that there had been a fatal stabbing outside St Christopher's, at 11.45pm when we would have been sat outside smoking. A gang of men had rushed up the alleyway and attacked a man in a case of mistaken identity.
A few years later, on a Saturday in early June, DH and I had planned to have dinner with 2 other couples in Borough Market. We'd had it planned for weeks and were looking forward to it, but when we got to DMums late afternoon to drop the kids off, I suddenly felt exhausted. I had to lie down for an hour and eventually DH said 'let's just leave tonight, we'll do it another weekend' so we got our bits together and DMum said 'can I come back with you, don't really fancy spending the rest of the weekend alone'. So we all got in the car and drove back to Kent, where I perked up and was fine! Put the DCs to bed, and got a takeaway. Then as the evening wore on, we all watched in horror as the story of the London Bridge attack broke on TV. People had been killed outside the bistro where we were supposed to be going. I picked up my phone to call my friend, and saw a text from earlier in the evening saying their train had been cancelled so they weren't going to make it and our other friends had a massive argument on their way there and both went off to stay at their mother's separately!