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?

My cousin who I am no longer in touch with had a baby a few years ago. Before the birth I told my husband what the baby's name would be. I had no logical reason to think this, I just knew. Sure enough, she announced she had had a girl and the baby was called the name I said.

Two friends of mine were going on holday to Tenerife together, one of them became ill and couldn’t go, so I took her place and went on the holday instead. Went out one night clubbing and bumped into my brother, this is early 1990s, so no mobile phones and I had no idea he was even on holiday. He had moved out of home and we didn’t see much of him.

Biggest load of old bollocks I’ve ever read!

My sister used to work for the benefits office. She was asked to help out with some paperwork randomly as there was a backlog, not her normal role. First folder she gets has her NI number on it. Turns out someone had been using her identify to claim benefits in another part of the country miles away. I always wonder about the most unlucky identity fraudster and whether she knew how it was uncovered.

@Shortstuff99

Who was that aimed at? It was it just a generic snipe?

New boy joined my year at school, having moved from a town 300 miles away. Turns out he lived next door to my mum's best friend who had moved up there to be with her new husband.

On our honeymoon we were in Vegas and I was noting the numbers the roulette wheel came in on to see if there was a pattern. I realised that the numbers, if mapped to their corresponding letter of the alphabet ie a=1, b=2 etc, spelled out ‘Congratulations to Mr and Mrs [our name] hope you enjoy the rest of your stab’ - it was a real shame that the last one came in on 2 and not 25 to spell ‘stay’.

As if that wasn’t weird enough, DH did accidentally later stab someone with a fondue fork so maybe there was something in it (the person wasn’t badly hurt!)

Years ago my family used to go on holiday in the East of Spain to the house of a family friend who kindly let us use it. We did this for 3 summers when I was 14-16 years old. I met an Irish girl of a similar age and we'd hang around with a group of other British girls and some Spanish boys every year. I spoke a bit of Spanish and helped her write a letter to one of the boys she fancied. We didn't really keep in touch long term and we stopped going on holiday there having been a few times. Years later one of my friends from home in Scotland moved to the South of Spain and he met an Irish girl at a party one night. It was the girl I used to spend my holidays with! We messaged each other but didn't keep the connection.

The same guy who was living in the South of Spain attended a local cultural festival with some other British people living in the area. He was introduced to a Scottish girl and, after a bit if chatting, she turned out to be a friend of mine from school.

I love coincidences!

Great thread!

@winepls

@MrsLinManuelMiranda You are a love, thanks! (Even if you are married to my future husband 🤣)

I got in a taxi in the Far East. It turned out I had helped the Taxi driver's sister move house in the UK the previous week.

Once when I was working at the opera house in Covent garden I used to go and sit down but Cleopatra's needle and read a book in my lunch break

Walked down there with a new book and my usual spot was taken so I walked further down to the bridge, found a bench and started reading

The book started off with the character sitting, looking out over the Thames, but the same bridge, waiting to start work, the book then gave a very detailed description of walking back up to Covent Garden tube station, where the character worked, which was the exact route I was going to take to get back to work

My Mum and Dad met in London and it turns out that my Dad’s Dad and my Mum’s Mum had sat next to each other at primary school in a small village in South Wales. They only found out when my Dad finally introduced my Mum to his family. Sadly my paternal grandfather died before he could meet my maternal grandmother.
Not quite as much of a coincidence but after my maternal Grandmother died I was browsing through a bookstore and spotted a book of vintage photos of South Wales. Staring out at me from a primary school class photo taken in 1923 was my Nana! Obviously bought the book.

I live abroad... a friend I met here lived next door to me in London 20+ years ago. Only for a couple of months and we'd never met. We were talking about places we'd lived and she mentioned the name of the road, we were both very surprised!

I once dropped my £5k engagement ring in a shop in North London, posted on MN and within 20 minutes I had a message from a lovely Mumsnetter saying they had found my ring! What are the chances!

winepls You are welcome; to the thread, not Lin!

I picked up our landline to call my mum and dialled...but before it even rang, there was a pause and then she said hello? She had gone to call me at the exact same time, never knew whose call actually connected.

I had a friend in the early 2000s called (changed for non-outing purposes) Lisa & her fiance was called Dan.

Lisa's sister, who lived about 3 hours away, rang Lisa on her land line. When Lisa picked up, her sister was confused because she sounded different, and said 'is that definitely Lisa? Lisa with Dan' to which Lisa replied yes. It transpired that it was actually another Lisa, who lived at home, with a brother called Dan. This other Lisa was my best friend, so the second Lisa knew who the sister was looking for!!!

It turned out they had similar land line numbers & the sister had misdialled & just happened to get the other Lisa. Who knew the other Lisa. Who were both friends of mine. Mind. Freaking. Blown.

This kind of thing happens a lot to Irish people...

We were on holidays and met another Irish couple. They went to the same school as me, she grew up next door to my aunt and then moved counties and they now live next door to my cousin.

JFK and Lincoln have 11 similarities- coincident? Not really as there are so many differences no one talks about and who are the other two presidents that no one bothers to include?

Shoot the side of a barn with bullets on and then afterwards paint the target where most of the bullets ended up...

My mother was born in India and is Anglo Indian, my best friend is Indian from a completely different part of the country. One day we were discussing family history and realised her great grandfather and mine lived in the same small (railway) town at the same time. Due to the size of the town and their similar status its almost certain the two families knew each other well.

My dad's first proper girlfriend was a bit older than him. He brought her home to meet his mum and her partner. Turns out she was his mum's partner's ex. My dad moved several hundred miles away.

My husband was engaged to someone before I met him. They had met at university but were both from different parts of the country to where they had studied. We had met at work and lived in different villages near the town we worked in and when we’d been together a couple of months I asked him out of curiosity whereabouts in the country she was from. It turned out she was from the village I lived in and had only moved there randomly and her parents lived in the same (long) street as I now lived in!

My grandad was one of 7 brothers, every brother married a Mary except from the youngest brother who's love died (also a Mary) in the war before they were married and he's remained a bachelor since. Maybe not that unusual as it was a common name for the time period, but I still find it cute.

We were on holiday in Florida once and my step dad wore the football strip for our small hometown team that nobody has heard of and about 5 people support. 2 people further down in the queue turned out to be from the same small town as us back home and noticed the top, we didn't know them. We then bumped into them every single day for the next week, either in park queues or at restraurants etc. Once we got back home, we were chatting one day (about a year or so later) about them and how it's odd we haven't bumped into the family since, given its a relatively small town. We ordered a Chinese takeaway that evening from our usual place, and the son of the family turned up as the new delivery driver!

On holiday in Cornwall, friends and I went for a long walk along the coastal path and stopped at a pub. The landlord asked us where we were from, told us he came from the same SE town and explained where his baker's shop used to be.

Four or five years later, I went out for a drink with a colleague and some of his friends. They had had gone to Cornwall a year later, done the same walk, gone in the same pub, and had what sounded like the exact same conversation with the landlord.