Car-incidence
Friend of my mum's, called Cassie (so not me, but it's such a freakishly coincidental coincidence it quite frankly terrifies me)

Long ago, before the time of mobiles, my mum's friend's car broke down mid-journey leaving her to walk the rest of the way to work.

Walking past a phone box in an area she'd never walked through before, the phone rang. Though it was unlike her to answer it, she did anyway.

"Cassie! You're late for work - is everything OK?" Panics her boss.

Cassie was suitably freaked out. Turns out that her boss had looked at her (paper, back then) employee file, and dialled what she thought was her home phone number.

But it wasn't her home phone number. It was her employee number. The exact same number as the one for the telephone box she happened to walk past at that specific time - having never done so before or since!
(Northern Lovely, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 16:40, Reply)

Di Di Di!
Creepy as fuck, this. It had me weary for quite some time.

One Saturday in August 1997, I was having a cheap night in due to the lack of cash, and sat in drinking with my folks. It was great craic, my folks are always good for a laugh.

It was getting late and in the background the TV was on, and for the umpteenth time we all groaned when the news gave way to show Princess Diana getting onto a boat with Dodi Fayed and generally going out of her way to pose for photographers while pretending to be offended. Typical! I'm sure you'll remember we were all sick of seeing her plastered unneccesarily over every newspaper and magazine.

But on this news report in particular they were commenting on speculation that Di could marry Dodi.

"Never," interrupted my inebriated mother. "She'll never get to marry him", she drunkenly slurred.

My mum's always been fairly sharp on certain matters of life and logic, so we usually recognise when she gets like this, and we turned our attention over to her completely to allow her to elaborate.

Seeing her suddenly serious demeanour, we fell silent and grew aware of the tense atmosphere in the previously jovial room.
"The Royal Family will never allow her to marry that guy," she said, suddenly sober. "Because they will never allow Arab blood into the Royal blood line. Never!"

The family all sat silent for a moment to think upon the truth my mum had just stumbled across so easily. It's easy to see that such a move would cause a headache for the monarchy. Christ, it would rock their foundations. But taking action against them getting married seems a little too petty to any normal person like you or I.

But my mum wasn't finished. "She's too popular. They're going to kill her. And they're going to do it out of sight."
You could cut the atmosphere in that silent room with a knife.

That's a bit harsh, I thought. At the most they'd just discredit her and do what they could to see that she lost leverage with the British press. But it would make a great film, I thought.

The issue was quickly forgotten about, given that we didn't fancy spending the night talking about someone who were were sick of hearing about in the first place. The evening continued as jovially as it had before. A few more drinks and I was ready to collapse. I crawled upstairs, poured myself into bed and conked out.

The next morning I was rudely awoken, having been visited by the beer monkey in the night. My hair: ruffled, my wallet: emptied, my eyes: poked, and my mouth: shat in.
My dad rushed in shouting "Have you seen the news? Diana's deed?"

"Get to fuck, you lying shit" I cursed. "Just cause we were talking about her last night.

"No, really!" he said, turning my TV on. "She's really dead"

Well, now there was a shock.

Every part of the previous night's conversation flooded back into my mind. Specifically what my mum said. "They're going to kill her . . . .And they're going to do it out of sight!"
The tunnel.

Conspicary theories aside she predicted that she would die . .. soon!

What creeps me out is that she predicted most of an event which seemed wildly crazy to us just hours before it happened. The other parts she mentioned were later heavily speculated in many courts, papers, books, and documentaries. But not until months afterwards. I mean, If she was right about Diana dying under cover of a tunnel, what else was she right about? She may have predicted the conspiracy theories before the event itself even happened. NOw that's spoooky.

She couldn't have known. She's not psychic.

Is she?

You decide.

And it's all true. Spoooooooooooky!

Incidentally, I'm selling a white Fiat Uno with a bit of a scrape down the side. Any takers?


Apologies for girth
(Barry Subchimp, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 15:07, Reply)

at a party
I was doing a bad impersonation of John Lennon, while being an obnoxious drunken arse and arguing with my brother, when someone started playing Oasis!
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 16:29, Reply)

a massive chain of events and a bit of an emotional ending
Mrs Toast is an illustrator who does work for various publishing companies around the world, one of which is based in France.
Many years ago she had some trouble getting hold of a copy of one of the magazine issues featuring her work. The publisher sent two out but they never arrived.
Skip forward several weeks and my cousin (who travels to France regularly) said she'd pick a copy up if it was still in the shops.
She managed to grab a couple of copies from Le WHSmith and brought them back with her.
However there was another delay here and there and it took another week or so before she managed to drop the magazine off at my parents house.
I had left home several years before but was working 5 miles away so decided to nip over during my lunchbreak to collect the magazine.
No one was in, so I grabbed the magazines and was about to leave, when for some reason I decided to go upstairs where I was met by my old cat. He was about 17 years old now and had been my pet since he was a kitten.
On seeing me he leapt up from the bed, meow'd alot and started purring, rubbing around my legs and being generally cat like.
After about 10 minutes of this I had to get back off to work so said goodbye and set off.

2 hours later my mum phoned to say that she had got home to find Tom had died in his sleep on their bed. That he had been very quiet and shakey for the last few days and his arthritis was really getting the better of him, so it was probably a blessing.

If Mrs Toast hadn't done the illustrations for that company in France who failed to send stuff out and my cousin hadn't been going to France and able to find the magazine and then have various delays so that the magazine didn't get to me until the day it did.... I would not have seen my cat one last time.

When I explained to my mum how bright and alive he had been on seeing me she fell apart crying, and I almost do typing this.
It's my one bit of possible, personal evidence that fate exists, and it does scare me a bit.
( HappyToast Groat froth, Fri 9 Feb 2007, 8:00, Reply)

I was listening to a Blink-182 CD

and immediately after a particular song ended - another song began WHICH WAS EXACTLY THE SAME!
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sat 10 Feb 2007, 15:40, Reply)

Weather KILLS!
My mum lives in a fairly small village. Our local vicar's house is right over the road, next to the church.

One stormy night, when I was a nipper, and scared, my dad held me up to the window and said 'when it's thundering, that's just God clapping'. When it lightens...

He never managed to finish the sentence because it did strike lightening at that point. I shat myself, not as much as the vicar must have done though, because it hit his aerial, collapsing his roof!

The worst part was, the insurance company wouldn't cover it, saying it was an act of God! (my dad found this hilarous and 15 years later, still does, he isn't very religious!)

Whilst his roof was being repaired he took a well earned ski break in Switzerland with 2 other vicars. They got a ski lift to the top of a high snowy mountain, in order to ski down. They stopped to take in the view, and while doing so noticed the weather turning dark.

Before they could snow down the mountain to escape the brewing storm, a bolt of lightening struck, hitting and killing the vicar in front of him, and the vicar behind him. Our vicar was unhurt.

No-one in the village could decide whether he was the luckiest or unluckiest vicar ever - or what he'd done to piss off the man upstairs!
(Northern Lovely, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 17:30, Reply)

When I was 16 I was standing at a set of traffic lights waiting to cross...
When the Green man showed a car shot around the corner and past me at high speed, thinking that I had just escaped a close call, I continued to cross the road....only to be hit by a Police CID car chasing the previous car.

Anyways, I woke up went to hospital etc etc while the kind and very apologetic plain clothes police called my parents. They got my Dad, who upon hearing the news went white and nearly collapsed.

I thought he was just really upset I had been hit...he was...it was also because his sister had been killed by a vehicle accident many decades before on the same date, at the same time, at the same age, more or less in the same place and they got the phone call from the police around the same time of the day as well.

I was well freaked out.
( Bamboo Steamer, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 16:33, Reply)

Spoooky ghost
I was once cycling down the Saville Row when I almost hit a tiny, dead ghost by the kerb!!
It was spoooky, and oh so sad.
But on closer inspection it was a carrier bag.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 13 Feb 2007, 16:18, Reply)

Running of the Bulls
So one of my mates travels to Spain for the said event and does the now infamous "Harry Bolt" in front of the Bulls.

The mate he was travelling with runs with him and they have a jolly good time. With both of them running no one was able to get a pic of their daring deeds. So instead go and purchase a post card. The picture is of a man running full pelt in front of the marauding bulls.

My mate sends it home to his Father saying "oooh look what I got up to!!". On his arrival back in London the phone rings. Its his Dad.

I imagine the convo went like this:
"Hi Dad"
"Hi Son"
"Did ya get the post card?"
"Yeah, Funny thing about that."
"Whats that?"
"You know who's on that postcard?"
"No?"
"Your Uncle Barry, when he ran the guantlet back in the 80's"
"Jesus" *faint*
(Slatts If you cant remember it didnt happen, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 17:19, Reply)

odds.
This is a true story. I met a friend of a friend, called Shelley, lovely girl. She was going out with John, an aussie. They had the same birthday, the exact same day in the same year. It turned out, mine was the same as well, the same day in the same year. Freaky eh?

Whats really mind-boggling scary is that we were all born in the same hospital. What is a whole other level of freakiness, is that John was born in that hospital as his parents were living in the UK for year at the time and his mother went into labour 2 months early, this was the nearest hospital.

After some checking, and a visit to the local registry office, we pretty much determined that we were the only 3 people born that day, in that hospital, and we all met 25 years later in the same pub by sheer chance.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 23:09, Reply)

If Hong Kong Jimmy is reading this, sorry J, it's your story.
Hong Kong Jimmy's brother in law, a proper Fullham Londoner, first time out of the UK, is visiting the in-laws in Hong Kong. One night, HKJ takes this bloke to an out-of-city shanty pub up on the hills. A wizened old Chinese geezer walks up to the Londoner and pokes him in the chest. "I know you," he says.

"Leave it out, mate," says the Londoner. "I've never been to Hong Kong before."
"No, we no meet in HK. We meet in London. The Cock Pub. I beat you at darts. It was a Tuesday."

The Londoner's jaw drops.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 17:17, Reply)

Whilst on Holday in Ibiza a few years back
I met this girl. One day we were sitting round the hotel pool writing postcards and we discovered that we were both writing a postcard to same person.
(zoinks, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 17:14, Reply)

Bear with me....
I talking my sleep: I find this out because in the morning someone usually points it out, and asks what the hell I was on about.

Most of ramblings that people hear appear to be Me trying to explain something blindingly simple to a person who simply fails to grasp the stunningly obvious point. Sometimes I get frustrated enough to raise my voice - waking the one next to me - who then tries to understand what I'm whittering about, and compounds the problem by asking silly questions..

************************

This story has nothing to do with that: This is about one of the more rare occasions where I sit bolt upright, make a daft statement and lie down again: Fast alseep and blissfully unaware of my outbursts.

While my Then GF and I were visiting my parents and my brother, the three "lads" in the family go to do some "Man" shopping. Me, Brother and Dad go out to get stuff with which to Attack my brother's garden. It was massively overgrown (he an his wife had just bought it) and we were aiming to fell 2 trees and use the resultant wood as fire-wood.

The mission was to get a decent chainsaw... Brother and I homed in on the tasty looking toys, while dad potterd off muttering something about a nice "surprise"

We spent much time finding a good machine, toddled to the checkout, parted with entirely too much money, and surmised that Dad had already left, or would do soon. either way we'd meet him by the car.

On the way through the carpark, I took the oppertunity to tell Big Bro the wierd thing that I'd said the night before.
I'm an absloute Atheist, so both my brother and I found it amusing that I'd sat up in bed, and woken the Then MsHumpty by saying clearly, carefully and loudly: "I know what the lord wants us to do Dad. He wants us to kill them. He wants us to kill them all."

Pondering the meaning and cause of this utterance, we walked towards our car and past a small group of traffic wardens - one of whom was putting a parking ticket on a car.

"Bastards" Said my brother.. "You were probably dreaming about Traffic wardens" and then under his breath he said "Maybe it's them that God wants us to kill" We giggled for a fraction of a second, then noticed our dad cheerily stood next to his car holding out the "surprises" that he'd just bought: A large "Splitting Axe" and a Broad-bladed Felling Axe.

"Here you go lads.. If you're going to enjoy doing the job properly, You'll be wanting to use these"
.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Thu 8 Feb 2007, 16:32, Reply)

We broke Montreal
Staying in a borrowed flat in Montreal owned by some young, rich banker who ate out all the time.
His cupboards only had cereal, his fridge held only champagne, milk and some Philidelphia cheese that had gone off months, if not years, beforehand. It was solid green.

Anyway, we've got pizza from the supermarket. Turn on the oven, and all the lights go out.
Fuck.
Maybe his oven has never been used and it's all wired up wrongly?
Fuck!
We've broken his hugely expensive penthouse flat.

Look out the window, and half the city is dark.

FUUUUUCK! We've broken the city in the name of pizza.

(It eventually turned out a discontented power worker had literally thrown a spanner into the works, taking out most of the city's power.
But for the longest time, we thought we'd plunged Montreal into darkness by turning on an oven.)
( chthonic, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 15:03, Reply)

Stoooooooool!
As a callow youth, my mind was constantly working on bettering my sex-life (as it is to this very day), and my then girlfriend was growing reluctant to shag in my parents' house, namely because when we started banging away, the whole bloody street knew we were at it.
Nothing was said by my long-suffering folks, but I now realise I could have been a little more discreet when they were downstairs. (Think of the dinner party in Carry On Up The Khyber, plaster falling in the soup etc, it must have been something like that when we were going at it full bore.)

So, deciding the rickety old bed was the problem, and being a resourceful kind of chap, I spotted a fantastic chair in a forgotten corner of the office at work, and realised it was just the right height....... well, hey, I was young and fit, acrobatics were possible back then!

Kind of like a high chair, or a barstool with a back, covered in a wierd scaley leather, almost like croc-skin. Unique, very distinctive and very definitely home-made, I immediately purloined it and took it home.

The first time I led my girlfriend up into my newly equipped lair, she took one look at the stool and had a metal shit-fit. She wasn't staying in the same room as it, let alone going to be porked over it.

When I caught up with her (several streets away) she informed me that the stool had been made by her Grandad, who had in the later years of his life had both his legs amputated. Alas, as a child, she had shared a bag of sweets with him, whereupon he had promptly choked to death on one.
Over the subsequent years she had lived with the idea that she was guilty of killing her Grandad, complete with nightmares of him dragging himself along on his stumps, trying to cough up a Murray Mint.

(I was, of course, ultra-caring that night, and persuaded her to give me a BJ, as remedial therapy to dispel any fear of choking she might be developing. Honest. Swallow dear, swallow!)

Enquiring at work as to the origin of the stool, I was told it had been pulled out of a skip years ago by one of the lads when they were doing a one-off job in another town 25 miles away. Where Grandad Stumpy lived.

Spoooooky.

I tupped her in the car after that, till I got sick of having a Mini gearstick probing my donut, and resumed making my parents' life unbearable upstairs.
(Rsoles, Wed 14 Feb 2007, 21:19, Reply)

stretching it
I was once part of an extreme submersible dive to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the lowest and most inaccessible point known to man. The pressure per square inch down there is enough to destroy all organic life. Just a handful of people have ever made it to the bottom in a tiny sphere of metre-thick titanium with mineral crystal observation holes.

As I peered out of the tiny six-inch diameter hole I could dimly make out a figure in the halogen beams. I squinted to discern the figure, and it swam close to the window. It was a human face, pressed against the crystal ... speaking.

I forced my head against the hull to hear the words, and made out an eerie bubbling voice: "Actually, ALL life is organic.

Apeloverage. Fancy meeting you here.
(frankspencer, Tue 13 Feb 2007, 16:14, Reply)

excellent, i get to tell my ace story
Firstly, some cunt i once told this story to said he liked it so much he was going to start telling it as his own, so if it appears again, then its mine not his, and if you're reading this rougepath, yes i mean YOU

About 15 years ago as a wee lass my family moved into a new house, the previous occupants having been a young family also. During the move our piano got a bit bashed about so my dad got a piano tuner in. The piano tuner arrived and got down to it. Whatever IT is.

Anyhoo, once he was done the money changed hands and the piano tuner enquired about what had happened to the old lady who lived in our house? My dad said there is no old lady, and the people who lived in the house before us were a family too with no old lady in tow. The piano tuner said that is very odd because i have tuned this piano before, in this room and an old lady lived here... Upon investigation the piano tuner and my dad found the piano tuner's rather dusty and yellowed card down inside the depths of the instrument...

Turns out that an old lady had lived in the house before the other family... she had once owned our piano but when she had moved had sold it to a second hand shop, whereupon my dad had purchased said piano. A few years later we had also purchased her old house, and placed the piano in exactly the same position!

I love telling that story
(pinkois, Sat 10 Feb 2007, 8:40, Reply)

someone told me
that I was an enormous cock who only ever listens to the bits I want to hear.

This person has never seen my cock - SO HOW DID THEY KNOW IT WAS ENORMOUS?
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 16:32, Reply)

Maybe not
a coincidence but one of the many bars I have worked in was very very haunted, which caused some amusement and occasional terror.

During a late night drinking session after work the bosses wife got up and said "If there's anyone from the other side here give us a sign."

Every alarm in the building went off.
(cs1ca, Fri 9 Feb 2007, 1:53, Reply)

Flash Gordon
A mate and I went thru a phase of saying 'Gordons Alive' in a Brian Blessed off of Flash Gordon stylee. We said it a lot and mildly pissed everyone off. For a few weeks. We got quite good at it though after a while.

We were in the Shires shopping centre in Lester and got in the glass lift, not really noticing or caring who was in there. Mate goes 'Gordons Alive' in a particularly fine attempt, deep, lots of resonance only to be outdone by a huge booming "EXCUUUUUSE ME" coming from behind us. We turned round to see the man Blessed himself standing with the other occupants looking like we had deliberately taken the piss.

That was just spooky. We apologised and stood there for the next 30 seconds in rather embarassed silence. As we got out, my mate quickly said to him "I liked you in Blakes 7" (BB was in episode 2 of the very first series in about '78, why the fuck he picked that one I dont know) and we walked off quickly as punched him in the arm for being a twat.

(oh and 'SOME PEOPLE QUESTION THINGS'- sounds like you live in Anglesey. They are all fucking freaky gingers. Seriously. Its like the epicentre of inbreeding that place. Not surprising though, my mate moved there (he aint quite all there) and said there are only 2 things to do, drugs and rape).
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 22:59, Reply)

You? Here? Now?
Many years ago, I worked in Oxford. There was a chap there called Georgui, who everyone knew. Like, everyone. Apparently, everywhere he went, he'd meet someone he knew. It was a running joke. Anyhow, I got to know him when I got the job, and like most people, laughed over the whole thing.

Fast forward some number of months. I split up with an ex-girlfriend, and sulked off to my Dad's for a bit of pint-shaped therapy. Turns out my Dad and brother had planned a trip to Avebury to see the stone circle and stuff. Blooming miles from Oxford and everything, see. We did the place, all dead impressive, and eventually decided to head for home.

I'm telling them all about Georgui, and how he always meets someone he knows everywhere. We were just giggling over the chances of this happening, when... round the next corner walks Georgui and two mates. We greet each other, high five (told you it was a while ago) and laugh over the co-incidence.

His mates scowl brutally in Bulgarian. Turns out they'd taken him to the most unlikely place they could think of, just because he met someone he knew everywhere he went. They'd thought that they'd finally managed it after months of trying, when he spotted me!

He bought me a few drinks over it... it was nothing compared to the fun he'd had winding his mates up over it.

The best co-incidence ever, tho': I really love Mrs. God, and she reeally loves me, too. What's the odds of that happening?
(purplegod counting down for Christmas!, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 18:33, Reply)

Now this is *REALLY* Spooky...
Driving down the M6 a few years back, I saw a black Calibra, exactly like my mate's, on the hard shoulder.

'Shit!.. thinks I, does the honorable thing, goes to pull onto the hard shoulder to reverse back.

Except I couldn't, because a black Vectra Estate was also reversing down the hard shoulder towards them.

As I'm pulling in after it, a Red MR2 pulls onto the shoulder, and heads back as well.

----

My mate had lend his Calibra to his parents, who had a burst tyre. Randomly, he happened to be passing in his works' Vectra on his way to a job. I was on my way down south to see another mate, completely unconnected.

The lad in the MR2 was another good friend of ours on his way to to a job interview in Wigan.

What makes it even more insaaaanely coincidental is that we hadn't seen each other for about 6-8 months, it was about 2 in the afternoon, and there was no bugger else on the motorway.

Spoooooooky. And Stuff.

None of us completed our respective missions, and went to the pub to celebrate and discuss this immediately. The End.
(ArfurDaley Must try harder., Tue 13 Feb 2007, 18:17, Reply)

Dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner... THATman!
Ages ago I decided to try a little test in a restaurant...

After my meal I picked up the little bit of parsley they balance on the top and on the underside I wrote my name in black biro.

The waitress collected the plates and we ordered pudding and coffee. About 20 mins later I heard a voice at a nearby table say "There's writing on my parsley!".

So I piped up "Ah, that'll be mine! I wondered where I'd left it!". The waitress apologised while the couple upped and left the restaurant :-)

Not sure if spooky or just gross. Moral of the story, don't eat the parsley.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Tue 13 Feb 2007, 10:08, Reply)

100% true
I was sitting alone in a bar, as I often do, when I spied a girl of quite striking beauty. In fact, I seemed to recognise her from somewhere and approached her. Up close, she was even more of a stunner. It took superhuman willpower not to thrust my tongue immediately into her fulsome cleavage.

"Hello," said I. "If I can tell you five things about yourself that no stranger could possibly know, will you have sexual intercourse with me?"

She loked at me with a quizzical smile, perceiving me to be a drunk chancer. Since she was also slightly drunk and possessed of a healthy sense of humour, she agreed. After all, I couldn't possibly deliver on my claim, could I?

"Your name is Karen ------," I began.
"That's amazing. Do I know you?"
"No, but I know you went to ------- Secondary School."
"Er, how do you know that?"
"You enjoy horse-riding. How is Blackie, your mare?"
"Shit, this is spoooky."
"And you lived in London for a year. PR is a terrible job isn't it?"
"How ...?"
"And finally, you like to have sex standing up."

She blushed deeply and crossed her long legs. She was lost for words. I took her smooth hand and led her to the ladies', where I removed her lacy g-string with delicate hands. She placed her hands on the cistern and I sunk my raging boner to the hilt in her hot, lush parts. We came simultaneously, my weapon lodged deeply in the tight grasp of her spasming love muscles.

Later, as we lay sodden with juices in my flat, she asked me how I had known so much about her. Simple: as head of HR for a company she'd sent her CV to, I'd been attracted by her picture and remembered a few of her details.

"But what about the sex standing up part?"
"That was a guess."
"Actually, you were wrong about that. I prefer doggy."

And she really did.
(frankspencer, Mon 12 Feb 2007, 9:20, Reply)

I was once a barman
And I was working behind the bar one evening, and it was nearly the end of my shift, I was just waiting for the manager to come down and take over so I could go home. It was fairly quiet, as it was mid-week, and I was chatting to a guy stood at the bar. He happened to turn around and spot someone at a table, and he said 'That fella looks like me! I should introduce myself!', and off he went.

He got to the other guy's table and pointed out that the two of them looked very similar, to which the other one agreed. The guy I had been speaking to asked "Where are you from?"
"Cork" came the reply.
"Me too, which road?"
"Andrew's Lane"
"Andrew's Lane? That's where I'm from too! Which number?"
"Number 23"
"I don't believe it, me too! What are your parent's names?"
"John and Sarah"
"Incredible, so are mine!"

At this point, the manager came down, signifying the end of my shift. "Anything happen?" he asked me. "No", says I. "Oh, but the O'Malley twins are drunk again".
( Awesome Welles petitioning for foetuses to be rebranded 'wombles', Sat 10 Feb 2007, 20:13, Reply)

I was reading Viz and having a good laugh

some time later, I looked at b3ta...

to find EXACTLY THE SAME JOKES!!!!
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 16:19, Reply)

Poogle reminded me...
When my son was about 2 1/2, he had just learned to speak and was busily exercizing this new skill. We were driving and he started to cry in the back seat. I asked him what was wrong. He told me he was so sad because Baby Jack had died. I was completely taken aback and tried to explain I'd never lost a child. He said, "No, no, before."

I got all goosebumpy (again) and asked more questions. Apparently, we lived long ago and Baby Jack got very sick. We didn't have any money for the doctor and Jack "took sick" and died. James had a different name then and I was married to a different man than his current dad. I was so sad Jack passed away I went down to the bridge and fell in the water. I had a long dress and it held me down and I died, too.

I asked James where the bridge was and he said "You know, the really big bridge. By the really big clock."

He doesn't remember this story now. The odd thing is, I absolutely love England and I'm unreasonably terrified of drowning.
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Sun 11 Feb 2007, 4:38, Reply)

viewed from the surface of the earth
the moon is exactly the same size as the sun.

which is why we get the cool halo effect during an eclipse when we see the solar flames and that, but not the sun.

this is the only place in the known universe this phenomenon occurs.

i take this as proof of the existence of gods, aliens, ghosts and bottle-nosed-snarly-bleeps.
( monstrinho do biscoito teeeshurts = www.nogunarmy.com, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 23:29, Reply)

Fancy seeing you here...
Way back when I wasn’t repulsive to the opposite sex, I had a jolly nice boyfriend who I met at uni. His family were from one end of the country, mine from t’other. And his family were well off, catholic and a little uptight. But very friendly and welcoming all the same.

After a couple of years of going out with him, my mum and I were invited to his traditional family Xmas get together, where all the branches of the extended family in the country would descend on one household for a good old fashioned knees up. We drove down to his parent’s place, anticipating a really fun do.

Approaching the (enormous) house, my mum looks slightly apprehensive and says to me “they’re quite posh, aren’t they?” I reassured her that, yes they were, but as long as we didn’t get on to any taboo topics of conversation (such as abortion, divorce, the fact I was sleeping with their son) that it would be fine.

We wander up the driveway and I’m about to ring the bell when the door swings open and I hear my mother utter the words “Jesus Christ!”. Loudly. Which is a GREAT start. I turned to give her a “shut the fuck up” look and see that she’s staring at the woman who’s standing at the door, who she clearly recognises. Which is odd, as I’ve never seen her before in my life. The woman is looking back with equal horror.
“Hi, I’m Dave’s girlfriend, Rakky, “ I interjected, “Can we come in?”
“Sure,” says the woman at the door, nervously. As we go in, a bloke walks through from the kitchen to the living room, catches sight of my mum and stops dead. At which point I grab my mother firmly by the elbow and drag her into the downstairs cloakroom.

“What the fuck is going on? How do you know these people?” I shouted...

Turns out a few years back this couple had been having “family and relationship issues” and had gone to MY MOTHER (who is a psychologist) for therapy. During which time they’d had to go into some fairly juicy detail about their family dynamics and interpersonal relationships.

“Is this true?” I asked her.

She nodded.

So by pure chance, my mother knew the intimate details of my boyfriend’s aunty and uncle’s relationship 7 years before I’d met him in a random flat though a friend of a friend at a university 250 odd miles from where either of us lived.

Spoooky? Nah. Coincidence? Surely. Embarrassing conversations over the quiche later that day.? You betcha.

If there’d been any length, they wouldn’t have needed counselling.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 16:28, Reply)

On Bondai Beach, Christmas Day...
...my friend got chatting to another Brit. He asked where she was from; "Reading".
"Oh yes?" he replied "me too!"

It transpired that she wasn't just from his home town, but had lived next door to him for 9 years when they were children, but had never bumped into him before this point.

Which seems extraordinary until you consider the number of 22 year olds that take a gap year, the fact that they tend to be students, that students often come from the posher areas, the number of backpackers that include Australia in their itineray, the number of those that aim to be in Sydney over Christmas, and the fact that they all go to Bondai beach on Christmas day. You'd have to be some kind of loser NOT to meet somone you know.

At a Had Rin full moon party I tripped over so many gurning Surrey faux-hippies I knew from my sixth form college it was embarassing.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 8 Feb 2007, 15:39, Reply)