There’s No Such Thing As A Coincidence

Finding strange commonalities

I’m sure you will all have heard of the saying, “It’s a small world” when there are coincidences abounding. And how they keep stacking on top of each other. Well, it must be said I have probably had one of the freakiest occurrences of this ever this week.

I was at one of the many Crawley WORDfest events I’ve been to this month, this time at ‘Noir At The Bar’ in the Punch Bowl. It is an event where they have eight crime writers and they take turns, drawn at random, to read from one of their books.

Anyway, one of the authors was Sheila Bugler, and she read an extract from her most recent novel, ‘Dark Road Home’. In the interval I was at the book selling counter which had been set up, looking to add to my already overflowing TBR pile at home, and I had her book as one of three in my hand. She was by the book sellers, talking to one of the other authors from the night – Barbara Nadal – and I overheard her saying something about County Clare.

So, when she had finished her conversation, I started to speak to her, and said I had overheard her mentioning Country Clare, and I said to her that my dad came from there. It turns out her dad came from Ennis in Clare as well. When I gave her my surname, it was one she had heard of from the area, along with the surname of some of the in-laws over there. The event was about to get into the second half, and so not really thinking much more of the coincidence I said I would find her afterwards to get the book signed.

At the end I went over to get the book signed, and we were chatting, and she was asking how long I’d been in Crawley, and where was I before that. I mentioned I had been born and raised in Leicester. Which did freak her out a little bit, seeing as she too had been born in Leicester, a couple of years before me, and so we had both been living in Leicester at the same time with fathers who had come from Ennis. A double coincidence. Both being of Clare descent we had got on to talking about the amazing All Ireland Hurling final the previous year which Clare had won after double overtime, with part of her inscription in the signing of the book being ‘Up The Banner!’

We continued chatting, and I was saying how I ended up in Crawley, and I mentioned who I work for. She asked if I knew anyone from the company who worked in London. And she mentioned a couple – Paul and Moira. And I think her poor head nearly exploded when I said yes, I knew them and was friends with them still on social media. Seeing as she had lived near them in Hither Green and had socialised with them.

At which point it was felt best to stop talking and go our separate ways before we found out we were related, or any more random coincidences came to light.