Hey i was just wondering if anyone had descovered that someone that they meet knows a family member or close friend? I have had a quite a few ... one with my girlfriend, i have a picture of myself playing in the sand as a kid and in the background are her and her parents walking.

I met a guy, now one of my best friends, two years ago, and as we got to know each other we found out that, four or five years previously we used to swim in for the same local swimming team and even compete against each other in friendly squad race events. Chances are, we probably ran into each other a lot more, even before we knew who the other was.

I first knew my girlfriend when I was six....she lived next door to my mothers aunt....almost 15 years later we saw eachother again in College.....

Neasrest thing I had which was weird was that I was reading Intervention by Julian May and the book scene I was reading was set in Edinburgh University on the day I was reading it and strangely enough I was visiting Edinburgh University. What was even stranger was I was sitting outside a pub, readint the book at lunchtime and I got to a bit where two characters in the book were having lunch in the pub I was sitting outside at the precise time I was reading about them! Very strange to be reading a book and to find yourself in it as an extra.

I know when my sister first went to school in Aberdeen (we're talking early 80's here) it turns out that one the mother of one of her friends had worked with my mum as a Nurse in Bart's in London in the early 60's whilst her Dad had served on board oil tankers in the Indian Ocean with my Dad - small world.:)

I once worked with someone for four years before we discovered that we were related.

My current best friend was always a guy that was in the background when I was hanging with other friends, though he was in the same class as me pretty much all the time.

My current girlfriend had known my cousin's stepfather for about three years before we met properly and began talking.

Bought a paper from a guy outside the factory (he looked pale and sad and like he could use a good feed) I was working in - my first job - only to discover he was living in a flat officially rented to my 6th form biology teacher, Helen (she was doing it as a favour to him because he wasn't eligible for a council flat and she was really living elsewhere with her boyfriend) and only a few streets away from my parents home I had moved out of only a month before.

His - the paper hawker's - best mate and fellow paper hawker on that fateful morning, Craig, had once had as a girlfriend, Cathy, someone I knew both from the Scout Movement and in a 6 degrees way, because I'd dated her next boyfriend Graham; my brother's name, whose children now attend the school where my mother works.

Paper hawker's flat-mate's girlfriend, Caroline, my sister's name, later had a child by my friends brother.

My friend above, Sue, had so similar address to my own when I met paper hawker - house number 382 - that she mistakenly offered it to the staff at the casualty department when she was taken there after a blow to the head.

Craig attempted to date my sister Louise,who turned him down, but later dated a guy by the same name. Sister Caroline's current squeeze is another man by that name.

Paper hawker's brother is Paul, the name of my husband of the time, his sister is Ann, my mother's name. Ann the sister married two men called John, my father's name, whose second wife is also an Ann.

....lol. Am I boring you yet? Long story short: through what you may call either coincidence or Serendipity (and following a series of other meetings): I switched busses 6 months later - choosing not to get on the bus I'd been waiting for and that was stood in front of me with its doors open -

...hopped onto the Number 23 that was coming along behind - but would drop me further from my destination -

... sat upstairs - although there was ample space within the lower deck -

... and discovered Paper Hawker sitting two rows behind me.

We eloped a month later.

Funny given he didn't believe me when I told him I'd come back to the factory gates to buy a paper from him once I'd parked my bike.

Has to be one of the most consequential promises I ever kept.