A quite amazing coincidence happened a couple or so weeks ago.

We had taken Willie (our dog) for his haircut at the doggie parlour in Aubusson and then had two hours to fill. We went and had two new tyres fitted to our car (as you do when you've got a lot of time on your hands!) then we meandered down into Aubusson town and had a bit of a mooch, then called in on a friend who has recently opened a dress agency.

She was chatting to another English couple and we all said hello and started chatting together. The lady looked familiar but I put it down to our having held lots of book-swap days since we came to live in Creuse - almost 7 years ago.

Then the subject came up of where we came from and I mentioned that I'd gone to school in Canterbury and this lady said that she had too. It seems we had both attended the same school - which in itself was quite a surprise.


Then I asked her what her maiden name had been and it turned out that not only had we gone to the same school but we had also been in the same class at that school for about 4 years and we had been friends and I had visited her home for tea one day, back in those teen-age years.

We had by then moved round the corner to sit and have a drink at a cafe as we watched the world go by and caught-up.

Then her husband mentioned that he'd lived in Rugby as a boy and I'd lived in Rugby until I was eleven! What then really knocked our socks off was that he and I had attended the same junior school in those long-gone junior school-days! We hadn't known each other but what a coincidence.

They live about 20 minutes from us now and we have since kept in touch, but how strange is that!

It is such a small world.

That's great. I love this sort of tale. I suppose that education does play an important part in the choices that one makes and that people with similar educations and interests as children are more likely to do similar things later in life despite leading different lives, however it still seems statistically improbable.

It was such a surprise because we hadn't kept in touch after leaving school and until earlier this month, it must have been approaching 50 years since we'd last seen each other yet we still recognised something in each other's mannerisms to know we'd met before..

I had a similar experience. We went to see a band that our friend was a drummer in and the guitarist turned out to be a client I knew from 20 years previous when we both worked in the UK.

Like you say, its a very small world.