Coincidences

Posted on 2003/10/30 10:49:14 (October 2003) by john.

Pure chance, or something else...?

Recently I was having a conversation about coincidences - specifically the sort where you bump into someone in the street in unlikely circumstances. The conversation made me think that these were not in fact coincidences at all, but were in some way contrived. In fact, contrived to the point of being irritating. Let me give you some examples.

From my youth, I remember going on holiday to Cornwwall with my Dad and my brother. We'd gone to visit a beach for the day, sat down, turned around, and lo and behold there was one of my brother's teachers sitting next to us. As me and my brother were schooled in Leicestershire, this was a significant distance away, but there she was, one of his teachers, at exactly the sort of time the poor lad wanted to relax and stop thinking about school.

Then there's the girl out of the marmalade advert. Me and Tim had met her at a nightclub in Reading. I then proceeded to bump into her not once, but twice, on two entirely separate occasions, in two entirely different parts of London. Now London is a fairly large city - at least seven million people live there, and at the times we bumped into her neither myself, nor Tim, nor the girl out of the marmalade advert were living there. So we'd both just happened to go there for the day, on the same day, and were in the same part of London, at the same time. Twice.

My former hairdresser, a guy called Stacey, I've bumped into a number of times. Mostly it's been in Reading, which I haven't found too odd, as I used to live there, still have friends there, and presumably that's where he lives as well. So it's a place that is relevant to both of us. But then, within about two weeks of having bumped into him in a Chinese takeaway in Reading, I also saw him at Glastonbury Festival. There's about a hundred thousand people there, or something like that, so in that sense you would have thought the chances of bumping into anyone you know are pretty slim really. It was one of those occasions when you get the distinct impression the other person thinks you're stalking them.

Festivals seem to be eddies for this kind of occurence. There is probably some logic to this, lots of like minded people, in a similar age group, moving about a lot, in a relatively confined space. Perhaps it is just a foregone conclusion you're going to bump into someone you know but weren't expecting to see there. Still though, I remember another surprising coincidence, this time at Reading Festival. I was camping with my friend Leon, who was there with a lot of his friends from Canterbury University. So we had a big circle of tents, mostly containing people I didn't know (or at least thought I didn't). My little brother and sister, both living in Wales, came along for one day, and had met up with me at my campsite. Whilst I was rummaging around for things in my tent, I suddenly heard a shriek from my sister. It turns out (now take a deep breath) one of the girls camping with us - Leon's ex house mate's girlfriend - was also my Sister's best friend from primary school. They hadn't seen or heard from each other for years. Furthermore, my Grandmother had been talking about this girl's family just before I'd gone to Reading Festival, as they used to run one of the pub's in the town where my Grandmother lives, and it was in the process of being refurbished. Strange, that with that conversation still fresh in my mind, I'd been talking to this girl, blissfully ignorant of who she actually was (until my Sister pointed it out, of course). I think this was the best working example if yet seen of the six degrees of separation theory.

Then there's the bizarre case of Matt Patterson. I don't know this guy very well, but seem to bump into him on an almost monthly basis. Again, this is mostly in Reading, which is fair enough as it is a place relevant to both of us. But on more than one occassion I've also bumped into him in London. Perhaps we both just spend our lives wandering the streets aimlessly. There is now no element of surprise whatsoever in either of our voices when we say hello, it's more like the sort of hello you'd issue to your local newsagent.

Then there's that other Matt - a friend of a friend of Rob's. Again, we just keep bumping into each other. As we hardly know each other it ought to be hard work trying to make conversation, but we usually manage a good few minutes' chat nonetheless.

I therefore have a bizarre class of friends, seemingly all called Matt, who I only ever meet at random, and basically hardly know at all. When people ask me about these people, specifically how I know them, rather than the usual "I know him because we were on the same course", or "we used to work together", or "we lived in the same house for a while", I instead have to face the fact that I know these people almost entirely because I keep bumping into them at random.

Coincidences do not necessarily have to involve bumping into people in unexpected circumstances to be frustrating and make you doubt that you have free will in your existence. There are also those that make you feel like no aspect of your life is unusual or interesting. You tell someone where you live or work, expecting it to be somewhere obscure and unheard of, but it turns out the person you were talking to was born there or something.

Take when I lived in Hampstead. During this time, around Christmas one year, I was in Wales with my family. I was talking to a friend of my Dad's, and he had asked whereabouts I lived. I started off with a fairly generic "London", which prompted deeper probing, to which I replied "North London", then the usual series of questions "Do you know Hampstead?" to which he replied yes, "Well, more specifically Belsize Park", again yes, "Well, do you know the main road?", another yes... In the end it turned out he used to live two doors down from the building I was living in - I was at number 12, he was at number 8.

Similar to the above, I remember a few years back explaining to a friend of Tim's from Blackpool where I worked. We were in the lake district at the time, typically considered as being some distance away from Berkshire. In the same way I know almost no names of villages in Lanchashire, I would have assumed someone from Lancashire would have very little knowledge of Berkshire. So I kept things broad - I just said it was a small village somewhere inbetween Reading and Oxford. This prompted what seemingly should have been a predictable line of questioning - I really should see these coincidences coming now. It turns out her boss lives there and she has worked in Pangbourne many times in the past. There are probably only about a thousand people in Pangbourne, it therefore accounts for less than 0.002% of the population. There is really no good reason for someone the other end of the country to have any knowledge of the place, let alone have a strong connection with it.

One final example of this bizarre phenomenon, just in case you're thinking these are isolated incidents. On a whim once, I'd gone for a weekend trip to Edinburgh with the infamous Paul Brown. Edinburgh is notable by it's lack of proximity to Reading, where I was living at the time. We were wandering around on the Saturday afternoon, trying to kill time in the centre of Edinburgh until we felt justified to go and sit in a pub. Oddly enough, we found ourselves in a sort of armoury - a shop where you could buy ornamental crossbows, swords and so on. We got chatting to the guy who ran the shop, and he asked where we were from. Presuming the average Scotsman would have only a vague knowledge of the Southern counties of England, we began with "Somewhere west of London". As always seems to be the case in these siutations, he probed deeper, so we asked him if he knew Reading. "Yes I know Reading", he said, "My sister lives in Tilehurst". Tilehurst, for those not in the know being a district, for want of a better word, of Reading.

This seems to be becoming a very standard dialogue now - I talk to someone the other end of the country from where I live/work, and get into a conversation where I have to explain where that is, I start with being very vague, until it ends up they're actually related to me, live in my garden shed, have one of my kidneys, and have been following me around all my life.

On a similar yet slightly unrelated note, I recall being in Italy, talking to a lovely old Italian gentleman (the grandfather of one of Lorenzo's friends). He had asked where I came from, and I told him half of my family live in Wales. He said he'd been to Wales. "Ooh" I said, naturally interested, and was just on the verge of embarking on a conversation about what a really beautiful part of the country it was, and how he must have had a lovely time, when he said he was in a prisoner of war camp there. There followed a slightly uncomfortable silence, and a bit of shuffling about on seats, and then it was dropped as a line of conversation. Nothing so out of the ordinary in itself, but I couldn't help thinking, if I'd probed further, it would have turned out that the POW camp was in a field which has since been built into the school which my sister went to, or something like that.

Reading back through these examples, none of them seem really that spectacular, but nonetheless, I always get a strange feeling when they occur. It's as though there's something going on behind the scenes - it really seems hard to believe all of these coincidences are pure chance.

I can't come up with any suggestions of what it is that is going on behind the scenes of course, but nonetheless, in a country with sixty million people, events like the above do seem slightly uncanny. Is it really just a case of probability, or is there something more meaningful going on?

Shortly after being made redundant from my old job, I moved to Hungary with Susanna for a while. Later on I was approached by a company which had taken over my old company's product and asked to do some freelance work for them. One of the developers from that English company, based in England was Hungarian. Up until that point I'd never met any Hungarians in the UK except through Susanna. That one struck me as odd.

Posted by Simon W at 2003/10/30 14:33:23.

Have you ever considered the fact that you might me living a 'Trueman Show' style life and in fact all these coincedences are due to the relatively small number of 'players' in John's World.

Posted by Kev at 2003/10/30 14:53:13.

I should also add to that that the new company is small, with ony 3 developers, and one of them was the Hungarian.

Posted by Simon W at 2003/10/30 15:15:11.

Think of it this way: how many times do you walk through london and not meet someone randomly? how often do two people who you know but have never seen meet not turn out to be childhood friends? The problem with coincidence is that we don't notice all the millions of times they don't happen, only the few times they do. I mean, If I say "I went into Reading on sunday and you'll never guess what... I didn't see anyone I recognised" you're not exactly going to be bowled over with shock are you? We only notice things which are out of the ordinary, and don't comment on the times it doesn't happen. Er, yes. I'll be quiet now...

Byrn

Posted by Byrn at 2003/10/30 17:25:19.

i think my 'johns show' theory is better.

Posted by kev at 2003/10/31 12:19:01.

No, I don't buy that not noticing when it doesn't happen business...the fact it is it does happen far more often than it seems it should do given the probability of meeting someone at a certain time out of the millions of people around and actually noticing them.

Posted by Simon W at 2003/10/31 07:16:07.

OK, how about this - John has listed a number of conincidences here... which seem like a lot. But these have occurred over his whole life... how many times could you have possibly met someone you knew in a way you didn't expect in your life? billions upon billions. I wouldn't rate any of these at more than one in a few billion, so it's not that unusual really...

Posted by Byrn at 2003/10/31 24:04:30.

The real reason is that Reading is big and nasty. There are loads of people who live there, and all of 'em are keen to get away (quite understandably). Hence why, if you travel to the other end of the country, and ask somebody at random "Do you know Reading?", they're almost *certain* to say "Yeah ... I used to live there". Hell, even I would admit to that one - I went to the University there!

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/10/31 13:43:56.

Hmmmm.....Okay maybe you have convinced me Byrn!

Posted by Simon W at 2003/10/31 15:37:03.

Shh. You shouldn't have told John about the "Show". Now we'll have to be really careful with the camera placements..!

Posted by tom at 2003/11/03 10:13:27.

Shit am I on now? Er...

We've all heard of the six degrees of separation - or the much better Kevin Bacon factor. Its all to do with that.

Secretly, I really subscribe to the Reading is a shit hole theory too.

And its not in anyway to do with the "John Show" (think of the mechandising opportunities)

Remind me John, can you show us any pictures from your childhood???

Posted by dsp at 2003/11/04 09:09:02.

Secretly, I'm hoping Rob will do some more book covers featuring the JOHN SHOW. :-)

Posted by tom at 2003/11/04 11:41:17.

A gentleman stopped by my site one day. He liked the place and hung around for a bit. His housemate was then lured into our fold and she too became a regular visitor. One day the housemate happened to mention that she has a sister. A sister who happens to have been living in the UK for a while. Living in Reading. Living on Radstock Road.

Of all the places in the world. Coinkydink?

Posted by Rusty at 2003/11/04 15:29:59.

Rusty, I can only refer you to point 8.

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/11/04 18:04:39.

Has that Rob been posing as a woman again then...?

Posted by John at 2003/11/05 08:43:44.

Only at the weekends.

Posted by Rob Lang at 2003/11/06 24:20:31.

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