To ask for your stories of strange coincidences?

[Pepperwand]

Today I stopped at a petrol station and wanted to put £30 of fuel in the car but it blipped over to £30.10. When I went to pay I also bought two lottery tickets for £5 so paid £35.10. As I was putting the tickets in my purse I found two old lottery tickets so got them checked. First one won £30 and the second £5.10!

So, can I ask for your stories of coincidences?

When I was single I dated a guy for a while which didn't work out as he was still hung up on his ex.

Around the same time I made friends with a girl at our zumba group and we agreed to go out for some drinks. It wasn't until well into the third drink that we were talking about the same guy....

All a bit awkward

I was at a birthday party of a friend in a town that I, DH or the party holder had no connection to other than he lived there. Most of the people at the party only knew the party holder and weren’t from the town where he lived.
I know the friend, DH didn’t. We knew each other pen pals (I know, old school).
One of the other person at the party mentioned that she grew up in a certain town. DH grew up in the same small town. Long story short but the other party goers brother was a friend of DHs brother.

This thread is a coincidence in its self as something happened to me just a few days ago.
My mum asked to borrow a book as she has just got into reading so I stood in front of my book case and said ‘I haven’t read this in years but it’s a good one’ I then pulled out this book, opened it and out fell a railcard with 4th July 2009 - it was that days date 10 years ago exactly.

Not exactly a life changing sign I know but still a bit odd!

I was at a social event in N London years ago, the subject on our table turned to another part of London. I mentioned that I knew it quite well as my best friend as a kid had lived there, the woman sitting next to me mentioned she used to work there too, on B street- I said 'wasn't no. 36 was it?' She looked really shocked and said 'yes' Turned out she was a nanny for my friend and her brother when they were little, before I knew them.

My DM was researching her family history and we discovered that her own DM, who passed away when she was a little girl, had grown up in the same town (many miles away from the town where my DM and myself had been born) as my DP!

She’d lived a few streets away from where my DP had been raised and had got married to my grandad (estranged from my DM by then, sadly) in the church behind my DP’s childhood home, years before he was born.

I now live in the outskirts of London but grew up in a tiny little town on the South Coast. I've been going to my hairdresser for a few years now (who has a very strong New Zealand accent) recently we were chatting and I mentioned I was going home to see my parents that weekend, he seemed shocked that I hadn't always lived locally and asked where I grew up, when I told him he was gobsmacked - he grew up in the neighbouring town to me - and even went to the same school (albeit a few years before me) moved to New Zealand in his mid teens and then came back to the UK in his 30's. It blew my mind, no one I meet has even heard of where I grew up!

When we looked at the calendar on January we noticed my son's 7th birthday would be on pancake day and I said "oh when I was young my birthday was on pancake day too"..looked it up and sure enough my 7th birthday was also on pancake day! (Our birthdays are a month but obvs pancake day moves around) just thought it was so randomly weird yet wonderful to share!

The middle name of my first boyfriend was the same as the first name of my next boyfriend. His middle name was the same as that of my subsequent boyfriend.
This carried on for every single relationship I had until DH who has the same first and middle name as my first boyfriend.

This isn’t so odd when you realise that white British boys born in the 70s had only about 7 names to chose from

DH and I were on holiday at the same time, in the same hotel when we were kids. MIL has a photo of DH in the pool, and I'm in the background with my parents.

We didn't find this out until after we were married!

On my wedding day my dad was supposed to bring my 'something blue', he realised when he got to my house that he had forgotten it. No time to get it, at that point. So disappointingly i didn't have a something blue. It was a item of my late great gran mothers, who I adored. I was gutted.
After we married and where leaving the church, my dad was walking behind me, and stopped me to get some rubbish from the bottom of my dress before the photos. Turnt out that it was a blue sweet wrapper from my great nans favourite sweets. We left it in the dress. Looking back on the photos of the actual wedding, I was happy to see it was in the bottom layers of my dress the whole time.
I know it was coincidence, but I like to think it was a little way of my nan being there in spirit, and making sure I had my something blue from her all along.

This week I've been reading a book in which the writer relates her experience of buying, as a newly wed in 1925, a neglected estate in a then remote part of Italy, the Val D'Orcia. With a lot of work and a hefty inheritance they rebuilt the delapidated farmhouses on the estate and there is a photograph of one of the farmhouses. Yesterday my copy of a glossy magazine arrived and in it is a series of photographs of what I think is the same house now newly renovated in 2019.

I lost my bank card so had to request a replacement card and pin. Card arrived, pin arrived separately.......pin number was the one for my old card (in fact the one I use for all cards).

I applied to First dates channel 4. They finally called me a year later. I went to London’s first date restaurant, was led to my date waiting at the bar. I asked him where he came from and he said slough. I said oh my god your going to know my daughters dad. Bearing in mind thousands applied to go on the show. My child’s father abandoned her 8 years ago so when this guy asked me his name, aware the cameras were on me I said I’d tell him at the end of the evening. Sure enough not only did he know him, the families were really close 😳

Two odd ones. We went to Florida in 2012 and drive from Orlando to one of the Middle Keys in the midst of hurricane sandy. We stopped in some small town gas station en route to pick up provisions so we wouldn't starve if we had to bolthole ourselves in our hotel room.
Lady in front of us getting served recognised my Brummie accent and said she had grown up in an area of Birmingham where my family are from. She then asked ( laughing) " I don't suppose you know an Ann xxxxxxx do you?". It was my Mum. She had gone to secondary school with her.

2nd one happened just yesterday. My son is currently living in Sydney Australia. He has been there 6 months and although we text every day, we have only FaceTimed about 5 times. Yesterday he FaceTimed as he was out and about and halfway through talking to us stopped to chat to someone in the street. Turns out to be someone he also knew from school. The other side of the world in a random Sydney suburb street???

DH organised his friend's stag weekend. They're both from the north of France but we live in the UK. He booked an activity weekend and found a random resort nearby in the south of France.

When they arrived at the 'secret' location, the groom noticed the roads looked awfully familiar. It turned out that of all the resorts in the Mediterranean, DH had booked a flat in the resort where (as he discovered) the groom's parents had a holiday flat.

When they arrived in the flat, they went out on the balcony, and there were the groom's parents on the opposite balcony, just a few feet away, having a wee holiday.

My dh and I got engaged on 17th December and married on 21st April (many years ago). Eldest child’s birthday is 18th December, youngest’s 22nd April. Both born at 2.22am.

I was lucky enough to financially benefit from my coincidence story. I was on a train in my gap year and one of my errands for the day was to post a deposit cheque and booking form to an American bus tour I had decided to go on.
A bloke gets on my train in Cambridge and looked quite attractive and interesting so I got chatting to him. He was a backpacker just flown in from Guatemala and heading home. I mentioned my trip to the States and the hippy overland bus tour I was booking.
He said 'Oh I was booked to go on one of those but I couldn't and lost my deposit. They said the could transfer it to another trip but not refund it.' He offered to transfer his deposit to my trip.
I kept the cheque that I had in my bag ready to post, contacted the company giving the guy's name and that he gave his permission and sure enough, they transferred his $90 to my trip!
In an attempt to keep the luck going, I bought him a national lottery ticket, which was a brand new thing then, and sent it to him to say thanks but I don't think the numbers came up.

My mother and mother in law were born on the same day.

I grew up in a tiny rural village in a county even may English people haven't heard about.

1. After working alongside a fellow visiting researcher at the Natural History Museum, we got chatting that evening. We not only went to the same school, but he was a friend of my little sister.

1. Meeting a Chinese-born scientist in China last year, we got chatting and I discovered he'd once spent 20 years living in the UK... just a few miles away from the remote, unknown village where I grew up.

My DH middle and surname are the names of my two brothers. So my married surname is same as one of brothers first names!

I got talking to a girl in an airport queue. She was from NI and said she’d worked in Canada as a nurse. The street she lived in there was an old woman in her 70s who’s face seemed very familiar. One day they got talking and the lady remarked on her accent and told her she’d emigrated from NI 50 years ago and hadn’t seen her twin sister since. Turned out her twin lived in the same street as this girl back in NI.

I had a pregnancy glucose fasting test and there was only one other woman there. We had the same name, my due date was her birthday and her due date was my birthday!!!!

5 years after my grandmothers death I rented a flat and got the phone reinstalled. They gave me her phone number.

They’re all holiday based for some reason:

My mum went on holiday (in the U.K.) about 20 years ago and watched a parade. She took a photo of it and a young man was in the photo. Completely randomly I met my dh elsewhere and he is the man in the parade/photo!

It also turned out that I had been on holiday years earlier when I was about 15 in a very small part of Spain that isn’t very touristy. Future dh was living in the same tiny village we were staying in at that time.

Then again in Spain when I was about 11, my horse riding instructor was just walking past. I couldn’t believe she had chosen the same hotel and country at the same time

Oh gosh and another one in Cornwall. After the massive drive down there we pulled up in a car park and my teacher just pulled up next to us.

Didnt think I really had any...

However, going back to my 1Ds's birth (he came on his Due date) - we were undecided for a name but as soon as he was crowning Robbie Williams angels started on the radio. Funny - one of our name choices was after a well known angel. The snow then started falling out of the blue.

2nd coincidence. Im 25th DS 1 26th DS2 27th .

My sis and I had same due date for our boys both of them being 2.5 years apart exactly to the day.