Strange chance encounters

One of my favourite dinner table conversation pieces is about chance encounters.
I find it fascinating that no matter how far from home one travels, somehow one always manages to bump into a complete stranger with a common connection.

I was reading a wonderful book written by a fellow parishioner, David Brokensha. Its called Brokie’s Way, the memoirs of a remarkable man—a young soldier in World War 2, prisoner of war, student at three universities, colonial administrator, founder of a public policy-oriented NGO and professor of anthropology.

It is also the love story of David and his life companion of 50 years, Bernard Riley, who worked together in Africa, the United States and Britain for nearly 50 years.
What interested me in particular was the chapter in which David was describing life as a POW in Italy, and how his path crossed with another, Arthur Winter. Literally ships that passed in the night.

I was reading the book at the same time we were entertaining a visitor from Britain. His name was Arthur Winter and indeed, he remembered David very well. The two of them made contact again after nearly 60 years.

A few weeks later, a school friend of mine, Pat Webb, who now lives in Australia, phoned me to say that he and his wife had just returned from a trip to Canada where on a whim they decide to pop across the border into the US to see what things were like there. They booked into a B&B in a little town and then called in at a laundromat to get their week’s washing done.

Being a sociable fellow, Pat started talking to one of the locals who asked him where he was from. When Pat said Australia, his new-found friend said he didn’t know anyone from Australia, but he had a neighbour who had an accent just like Pat’s.

Turned out the neighbour was a woman who had left Pretoria to settle in the US years ago, and her family had owned the house that Pat and a few friends had rented when they were at the University of Pretoria.

The room that Pat had in that house was the room in which this woman had lived for all of her school years. They had dozens of acquaintances in common.
I remember too, in about 1972, while I was on a visit to my brother in Paris, I was walking down the Rue du Seine early one winter’s morning, long before the sidewalks markets or bistros had opened.

As I strolled towards the river, out of the mist along this deserted street came a shambling figure whose body language I recognised immediately from my school days a dozen years earlier.

It was a fellow called John Spottswood with whom I was on nodding terms at school. As we passed each other he said “Hi Chris”, and I replied “Hi John”, and with neither of us breaking our pace we passed on into the mist—just as we would have done at school a dozen times a week.

And only a short while ago, soon after my family arrived in Simon’s Town in Cape Town, we invited our neighbours and fellow parishioners, David and Dorina Shaw, to dinner.

As we sat having some pre-dinner drinks, the grandfather clock I had inherited from my parents, started chiming. David almost dropped his drink in surprise.
“I know that clock,” he said with considerable conviction. I said he couldn’t possibly know it because we had only just met them.

It then turned out that when my father took long leave in 1955 and we kids were all shipped out to relatives, Dorena’s family offered to look after my parents’ home.
That was at a time when David was courting Dorina and he said he never forgot that clock which kept reminding him every quarter of an hour that he would soon have to leave the love of his life and go home.

David and Dorina are still happily married and when you visit their home in Simon’s Town you will not be surprised to see that there are absolutely no grandfather clocks around.

And when I worked at The Star newspaper in the 1980s and was introduced to Peter Sullivan, who eventually became editor, I found out that this complete stranger and I were actually related.

Hopefully, in telling these few stories of chance encounters and long lost friends, I will have got you thinking about all the chance encounters you have had.
Call it fate, call it coincidence, call it what you will—it is absolutely fascinating and happens to everyone.

I believe it is one of God’s favourite hobbies.