Strange Happenings!

For those who only wish to talk football, sorry this is not for you yet, but depending on the comments it might become more to your taste later.

A few years back I was sat in the bar, where else, at Limoges airport waiting for Mme to come back from the UK. A lady who I didn't know came up and asked if the flight from Stanstead would be on time. Saying that there had not been an announcement suggesting a delay, I assumed that it would be on time, which it duly was.

Mme arrived, and we were walking across the car park, when she heard her name being called. Looking around she spotted two girls who she had taught at our UK village school. It turned out that they had come to meet their grandmother who my wife had sat next to on the flight without knowing who she was.

While we were on holiday last week we had a day when we went for a trip around the Camargue. As we were in the area Mme asked if we could go to a town on the outskirts of Montpellier as she would like to see where the children at the International school came from when they visited us in Northants. We found the town and I found a map without the school name on it. Having looked around at a very prosperous suburb we decided that we would not find the school.

We moved on and came across a fortified town by chance where we stopped to look around. Just as we walked in Mme said, there is the teacher that she used to meet in England. It had been eight to ten years since they had last met, and the conversation went on for some time between them, while the children she was supposed to be supervising ran riot around a sweet shop.

I think that at some stage in our lives we have things happen that you can hardly believe. Meeting people that you know in the strangest of places. I met an engineer who turned out to be a WFC season ticket holder at a business meeting. What was even stranger was that he had lived for some years within 200 yards of me without us ever meeting.

Do you have strange but true happenings?

 

My Dad was on holiday in Austria in the mid eighties and was at the top of some mountain and shouted out "Come on you Horns" to which a bloke came over to him and said to him "I take it you're a Watford fan".

They got talking and it turned out that they sat a couple of rows away from each other in the Rous Stand!

Also, whilst on a Football Tour of Malta with The Travelling Hornets a couple of mates and me bumped into Trevor How in a Burger Bar in Sliema at about 2am - all a bit worse for wear!!

 

It seems to happen more often than we expect.

I sat next to someone who lived at the end of my road but who I had never met before in the smallest, remotest restaurant in the south of Italy. After a glass too many I got on the wrong half of a train and, instead of arriving in Manchester, finished up at midnight in the waiting room at Stoke at Trent. The only other occupant was someone I'd been at school with nearly twenty years earlier in Birmingham. In the seventies I joined a new cricket club and opened the batting in my first game with someone who shared the same surname and given name...the scorers were very confused!

 

i'm wracking my brain coz these stories are great! i can't think of one..darn it! lol

 

These things happen all the time. Some friends of mine were in deepest Indonesia and met a German who, on discoverintg my friends were from Christchurch, asked for directions to an address he had been given by a friend of his. On seeing the address my friends advised him not to go there. The German asked if it was a 'bad' area. My froends assured him that the area was fine but the people he was to see weren't in. It was their address.

On a really spooky note, from when I lived in London. I'd been out one evening and got home at about 2 in the morning. I'd been home only a few minutes when the phone rang. I answered it and got a ringing tone as if I had dialed out. I was about to put the reviever down when I heard a voice say' "Hello."
I responded, "Hello."
"What do you want?" came the voice.
"I don't want anything," I replied. "You 'phoned me."
"No I didn't" the women responded.

After a bit of this to-ing and fro-ing we suddenly realised that we recognised each other's voices. It was a woman I had worked with some years before I had moved into the house where I was having this conversation. She was staying at her brother's house in Ipswich for the night and had just got in herself, or she would not have answered the 'phone. Neither of us could have known the 'phone number of the other.

 

that's really spooky NZ!

 

Have had a couple, but maybe not quite on this scale....

I was working in a bar in Southampton when a large group of guys came in. One guy was holding the kitty so was buying all the drinks. After the 3rd large round, I got talking to him and he said he was on his son's stag do, and pointed to who it was... I said, Oh, that's Paul Robinson! He asked how I knew that and I said I'm a big Watford fan. After studying everyone else in the group, there was also a guy who I went to Junior School (Warren Dell) with, and had a bit of a catch up with him too!

When in Sydney, I was down the harbour in my Watford shirt and a guy came over to me asking if I was from Watford. We got chatting and he is from Oz, but lived in Watford for a number of years and lived just round the corner from me!

When travelling around New Zealand, we stopped off in Queens Town. After quite a few jars, we stumbled upon an Irish bar. We approached to go in but was heavily under the influence and the door-man was looking at us, deciding whether to let us in. It was looking extremely unlikely until I heard a big scream 'Kev'. It was a girl I used to work with in O'Neills in Watford and she dragged me and my mate it, got us our first drink and introduced me to her work mates as a mate from back home. She was travelling around the world and just happened to be in NZ the same time as me. She also said her boyfriend was upstairs so went and visited him, where we got double/trebles for discounted prices all night (Then went to a night that sold cocktails in tea-pots, but thats a whole other story).

 

A good few years ago I was on a three month secondment in PNG. Anyone who's been there will know that it isn't a particularly safe place for wandering tourists & most foreign workers stay within the confines of their 'compounds' to avoid contact with the 'Rascals' gang. Having visited on holidays previously, I knew of the delights of the Pondo Tavern where I had bumped into some local Watford fans (national team plays in same colours), so I ignored advice and went there one evening by myself. I was sitting enjoying a beer when a voice said "Hi, what are you doing here?" I looked around and saw my brother who I had not seen for eight years & hadn't spoken to for five (not a very close family!) He too was on secondment there from his work in Sydney!

 

Also had a couple but not on the scale of some of these. At Uni I went to Italy with a friend and we were on a train between Rome and Naples and into our carriage walked someone who lived a couple of doors from my room - neither of us had mentioned we were travelling to Italy that summer.

Being a mathematician at heart I once read an article that "proved" that not only were these "coincidences" not strange but that they were inevitable - all to do with the fact that with 7 billion people on the planet even a tiny percentage probabliity will come about frequently.

 

Got a couple as well - mind you everywhere we go Mrs W_Y seems to know someone!

We bumped into some friends from our little village on top of the Empire State in NYC.

But the strangest one was a couple of years ago. To celebrate our Silver Wedding, Mrs W_Y and I did a small tour of the Far East and ended up on a tiny little speck of an island in The Maldives - it was about 100 yards wide by 500 yards long and you had to take a seaplane to get there. Total number of guests that can stay there at one time would be less than 100. In those 10 days we were there we met:-

- On the first day, a couple on honeymoon from Harpenden that work in the same company as me. We have a lot of mutual friends.
- A couple from the next village, but he used to live up the road from us and used to drink in one of my locals. Mrs W_Y recognised him, but I told her there was no way - until I got chatting to him in the bar!
- A fella that does training sessions for teachers. Mrs W_Y had been in one of his courses the previous September. Mind you, he was a complete pain in the arse and there was no escape on this island, there was one bar, one restaurant and a little gift shop - still after a long session in the bar one afternoon (Mrs W_Y was in the spa having a treatment) and evening, I managed to get lost!

It truly is a small world sometimes!

 

Years ago back in the eighties, my mates says to me lets go for a beer in Watford.........We duly met at a bar called "Shades" in Market Street whereupon my mate who is not a keen footie fan said "I went to school with John Barnes". Naturally I was scornful of this statement as everyone has been to school with someone famous and probably made some relevent remarks.......Anyway about 10 minutes later who should walk into the bar, John Barnes and Kenny Jacket. Straight away Barnesey walks up to my mate and says "Hello Dave" whereupon my mate says "Hello John" I then spent the evening chatting away to Kenny Jacket (much to his delight i'm sure) whilst the other two talked constantly about their days at Westminster grammer school..................Its straight innit!

 

I missed 'the' Southampton game in 1980 (?) cos we were on holiday in the Lake District. Couldn't find out the score the following morning- couldn't find a newspaper.
So Mrs Golden and I climbed Great Gable, sat at the top with our sarnies and then started down. Soon bumped into a big bunch of teenagers slogging up the last steep bit- one or two wearing scarves which looked like WBGS colours. 'You from Watford?' I asked hopefully. 'Do you know what the score was last night?' - fully expecting something really depressing. Turned out they were a group from the Grammar and they duly relayed the amazing news to me.
Big celebration nearly 3000 feet up in the middle of nowhere!
Not quite as good a mountain story as Warrington Hornet, but in a strange way in sort of compensated for missing the game.

 

Welcome to the watford not 606 GG

Good story (although was a Ricky lad myself!)

 

Well my friend is a Man Utd supporter, yeah I know, he's from Edgware as well! Anyway, we went to a couple of games a few years back at Old Trafford and both times we ran into the same person who he used to work with. Not only was this guy another non-local Man Utd supporter but he swears blind that the second game we ran into him at was the first game he had gone to since the previous meeting. Sort of thing that, had I not been there to witness it, I'd have been consulting with my BS meter.

 

Welcome to not 606 yellowvoice and Golden gordon

 

What years were you at WBGS GG? I was there in the sixties

 

Kenny Jackets's sister still lives in Baldwins Lane in Croxley

 

Do you keep in touch with her Leo.

 

Funnily enough - sort of - one of my friends - unfortunately a QPR fan lives next door to her

 

At WBGS 65-72. Happy days- yes, really! You?
Kev AKA Golden Gordon