Chance Meetings

It's strange don't you think, that you can go to the local supermarket and almost never see anyone that you know, but when out of your home environment and location, you never know who you might bump into or where.

These are just a couple of the strange meetings that I have had over the years.

The first happened a week after I had moved to London after finishing University in 1977 and I was walking from where I was staying to the office in the City, a distance of not even half a mile really.

This was the first week after I moved to London, so things were all new to me, and as I walked to work I suddenly saw a familiar face walking towards me. We both recognized each other, and had a quick chat, but as we were in a hurry we didn't exchange contact information, and I never saw him again. We hadn't seen each other for 5 years, he had been a year ahead of me at high school 100 miles southwest of London, and I had spent the previous 4 years at university 100 miles north of London. Why we should bump into each other on that short stretch of road I have no idea, but we did.

The second story is for me really amazing, as the odds of this happening are really slim.

I moved from England to Indiana in 1994, and a few months later I was returning from a business trip to Barbados. My flight from Miami to Chicago was late, and so I ran through the terminals at O'Hare airport desperately hoping to catch the American Eagle out to South Bend. This is only a 25 minute flight, but to miss it meant waiting several hours for the next plane, or taking a 3 hour bus ride, neither of which were very appealing.

I just made it to the gate as they were about to and boarding, was escorted across to the waiting plane and clambered up the stairs just in time before they closed the rear door.

Puffing and panting I went to my seat, which was the window seat in the back row, and there was a gentleman in the aisle seat who had to move to let me in.

He picked up on my accent as I said "Thank You", and asked if I was English or Australian, as many Americans have done, probably since I had spent almost a year in New Zealand in 1987/88 and had picked up a strong Kiwi accent. This I thought had virtually disappeared by then, but I think in my efforts to make myself understood to many Americans, who couldn't understand my English accent, some sort of Australasian twang came back.

But I digress...

We got chatting, I found out that he was in Insurance, and lived in the next town to me in Indiana. He said that he liked England, and had taken his wife there for a surprise vacation the previous summer. They hadn't done the usual trips that American tourists do in England, visiting places like London, Salisbury, Bath, Stonehenge etc, but instead they had driven along the South Coast and ended up in a small town called Bournemouth, did I know it?

Well did I know it!!! That's where I was born!

This in itself I think is pretty amazing, remembering of course that this conversation is taking place during a 25 minute flight on a puddle jumper from Chicago to South Bend, but the biggest surprise was yet to come.

He told me that while in Bournemouth they wandered into the Bournemouth International Centre (BIC) which is a conference and leisure centre down by the waterfront, and they got chatting with this very nice gentleman who turned out to be the manager there. He befriended them, took them out to different places, and they had remained good friends since.

"Oh what is his name?" my new friend said, having a memory glitch.

"Louis Candel?" I offered.

"Yes, yes, that's him" came the reply, "how did you know".

Well back when I was in high school, my Dad was a musician and had a 4 piece band in Bournemouth, and they used to play on Saturday nights in a small restaurant at the Bournemouth Pavilion, a large building that has a theatre, ballroom, several restaurants and a number of bars. My Dad got me a job there while I was at school to help me earn some extra money, and I used to work there evenings and weekends, firstly washing up glasses and later serving behind the bar. Louis Candel, a Spanish gentleman, took over as manager of The Pavilion while I was there. This was back in the early 1970's of course. After that I went 150 miles away to university for 4 years, and then spent the next 12 years in London.

So what is the likelihood that on a flight in the boondocks in 1994 that a stranger has not only visited my home town in England, but bumped into and became friends with my old boss from 20 years before.

Is that a strange meeting or what?