Goddam plane holidays...
While studying for a doctorate in Bangor I had a mate called Matt who I used to socialise with. He had a friend called Lindsay, who had a party where she invited her friends from Swansea, Huw and Sara. We all got on fine and after moving down south a year later found myself a good friend of Huw and Sara. A couple more years later, we organised a winter holiday and Sara's brother Dave invited some friends, Phil and Lisa from Bury, who he had made on a previous holiday. We also became good friends and had many other happy holidays.

Now wind back the clock 15 years to me at school in Derbyshire. Completely different location and set of friends. I used to sit next to a guy called Chris in Technical Drawing. That's as much of a link as I have with Chris, as I had lost touch with all of my school friends many years ago.

Clock winds forwards to roughly the present: Waiting at Manchester airport to board a plane to Canada for another winter holiday. Some guy I didn't recognise comes up to me and announces he knows me. Turns out it is Chris from Technical Drawing. We chat for 10 minutes about old times and that he's going on the same plane to the same place on holiday as me and my bunch of friends. Well, that's not such a coincidence in the grand scheme of things. Until... He turn's around, looks at me and also announces he knows Phil and Lisa - as he was on a safari (Fwah, Fwah, and then daddy shot it...) holiday with them the previous year!

Now that's spooky. My long forgotten mate Chris of 15 years ago was on holiday with my mates Phil & Lisa who are friends Dave, brother of Sara who was best friend with Lindsay at Exeter University who later went to Bangor where she knew my mate Matt who I used to socialise with. That link spans Derbyshire, Exeter, Bangor, Canada, Manchester, Swansea, some none uni mates, some uni mates and finally Africa. Apologies, that sure is some length.

Aren't I the holidaying social butterfly? As if that wasn't enough. We get off the plane in Canada and some other guy I didn't recognise comes up to me and says, "you're Mary's brother aren't you?", (which I was), kicking off some other chain of effing coincidences. That was the final straw.

I didn't fancy getting on no Goddam plane to fly back because the odds of being hijacked seemed a dead cert compared with what had just happened.
(JuanTheMan "hair-color:#FF6600", Mon 12 Feb 2007, 10:34, Reply)