Forget global travel and the internet, the Earth really isn't really such a big place. How many times do you hear people saying "isn't it a small world"?
Coincidences abound and no matter where you travel, it seems someone knows you or someone you know.
It happened to me last week. I was at the railway station when I got into a conversation with the only other passenger on the platform. It turned out that not only was he from my home town in Yorkshire, he knew my dad and was on his way back to have a pint in their local.
When I first started at the Diss Express and told one of the journalists here that I had moved from York, he said he had a grandson who lived near there. It turned out he was one of my youngest son's best friends at his small village school.
Then there was the time our neighbours came back from holiday in the south of France to say their son had been playing on the beach with, who they assumed to be, one of the local children. He came back to tell them he'd been playing with Alex. "Oh," they said. "That's a coincidence, he's got the same name as your best friend at school."
No coincidence. It was his best friend, whose family happened to be staying in the same village, having travelled independently.
Family tree research has also thrown up some bizarre connections. When I lived in King's Lynn, I discovered I was a distant relation to our next door neighbour – our ancestors having grown up in the same small fishing village near Aberdeen.
My wife also has a knack for finding needles in haystacks. She bumped into her Yorkshire infant school friend a few weeks after we moved to Diss. She didn't believe her eyes the first time and it wasn't until the third time she saw her that she plucked up the courage to see if it really was her.
They had not seen each other for 40 years and discovered they had both moved to south Norfolk only weeks earlier.
I used to think it was just my dad who knew everyone. Wherever we travelled for family holidays, from Devon to the Isle of Man, he would bump into someone he knew.
Perhaps not, we're all more famous than we thought!
- When have you said "Isn't it a small world?" Write to Letters to the Editor, Diss Express, Mere Street, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 4LW or email editorial@dissexpress.co.uk
