I was reading about the lady who had her handbag stolen 30 years ago......a young girl walking with her parents noticed a handbag laying in the mud at the edge of the river.....they checked it out and found it had credit cards, keys , etc still in it.....the parents noticed that the credit cards had an early 1990's date on them.....they eventually tracked the owner down.....a lady now in her eighties ......she had £240 in it at the time....which had obviously been stolen and the bag then thrown into the river....but an amazing re-uniting with the owner. It got me thinking of times in my life that where quite extraordinary....and one moment came back to me. About thirty years ago I was suffering with Industrial Dermatitis....my fault...using degreasing aerosols to clean components that I was assembling....without wearing gloves to protect my hands. So I had been referred to the St Johns Dermatology Hospital that was situated within St Thomas's Hospital....opposite the Houses of Parliament on the south bank of the Thames. I found the clinic that I had been referred to and found a seat and sat down. Eventually a nurse called out my surname and I stood up....and so did the older man sitting next to me.....so the nurse then mentioned a christian name....and it was the other chap....so I sat down and continued waiting. The waiting room was quite full and I was still there when the chap with the same surname came out to leave. He came over to me and said my christian name rang a bell from the past.....eventually it was discovered that we where nephews......and we had never met before. My father had been the second youngest in a family of twelve...living on a small hill farm in Montgomeryshire....his father was quite a few years older than my father.....being a small farm there just wasn't enough employment for such a large family to all earn a living from it....so they all dispersed and moved away to find employment.....he was living in Oxted Surrey....and we met up a few times over the coming years. What I find amazing is that in a catchment area of maybe twenty million...that we where both in London on the same day.....that we both went to the same hospital on the same day.....that we where both in the same clinic on the same day.....that our appointments where roughly at the same time.....that I actually sat next to him in that clinic....must be a chance in the millions for that to happen. Have you ever had something happen to you that is beyond belief and gob stopping.
