There was a phase in my life during which incredible coincidences and synchronicity were the norm. Most of these events were interesting, amusing and beneficial. I am glad now that I was able to enjoy them while they happened; I did not know that a very bad time was ahead of me.
I remember one sequence of coincidences that is unusual by any standards.
A new young colleague came to work in my group. His last name began with Green, and they put him next to someone whose – different - last name also began with Green. The third man in the small, partitioned off area had Verde in his last name. I was very interested in anagrams and the meaning of names at the time, and thought that it was quite a coincidence that three green men should be sitting close together.
I told one colleague, who said that four was his threshold: he wanted another green man before he would believe that it was anything more than coincidence. There was someone else who might have been interested, but I did not tell him because he was frantically checking his notes for an imminent major software upgrade at the weekend.
I decided to wait until after the system had gone live so as to get his full attention, but he suddenly looked up from his papers and - out of the blue, to no one in particular - said that he would be going to the video shop (this was before DVDs became the norm) to get The Third Man – a very good film.
I think that it is a great film, but the coincidence is that the third man is Harry Lime, and the screenplay was taken from a story written by Graham Greene. I told the first colleague that his fourth and fifth men had appeared.
This was just the start of it: there was much more to come.
I remember one sequence of coincidences that is unusual by any standards.
A new young colleague came to work in my group. His last name began with Green, and they put him next to someone whose – different - last name also began with Green. The third man in the small, partitioned off area had Verde in his last name. I was very interested in anagrams and the meaning of names at the time, and thought that it was quite a coincidence that three green men should be sitting close together.
I told one colleague, who said that four was his threshold: he wanted another green man before he would believe that it was anything more than coincidence. There was someone else who might have been interested, but I did not tell him because he was frantically checking his notes for an imminent major software upgrade at the weekend.
I decided to wait until after the system had gone live so as to get his full attention, but he suddenly looked up from his papers and - out of the blue, to no one in particular - said that he would be going to the video shop (this was before DVDs became the norm) to get The Third Man – a very good film.
I think that it is a great film, but the coincidence is that the third man is Harry Lime, and the screenplay was taken from a story written by Graham Greene. I told the first colleague that his fourth and fifth men had appeared.
This was just the start of it: there was much more to come.
