From author JW Ironmonger

My editor at W&N called me recently, while she was reading the manuscript for my second novel, The Coincidence Authority.

‘We’re thinking of compiling a list of interesting coincidences,’ she told me, ‘to help promote the novel. Do you have any big coincidences that have happened to you?’

And do you know, I couldn’t think of one.

I was busy at that time doing some research for my third novel. I don’t want to give too much away here, but I had this idea in my mind of a young futurologist who becomes persuaded, by his own computer forecasts, that the whole world is about to collapse. He flees from the city to a remote village where he convinces the villagers to shut themselves away from the outside world to weather the economic storm. Trust me on this. It will work. Now the thing is, I needed to research my idea if I wanted to make it convincing, and so I went onto Amazon and bought a book called ‘Collapse’ by the Pulitzer Prize winning writer Jared Diamond (subtitle: how societies choose to fail or succeed). It’s advertised as a Number One World Bestseller, and Jared Diamond himself is the undisputed world authority on these things.

Well it’s a heavy book, almost six hundred dense pages, but I worked my way through it. At the end I wanted to ask Professor Diamond a question. I wanted to describe the conceit in The Apocalypse and the Whale (that’s the title of novel 3) and ask him if he thought my scenario was possible. I toyed with sending him an email. But he’s a professor at UCLA! Why would he take the time to read my fanciful musings?

So instead I went off on holiday with my lovely wife Sue. We spent three nights staying in a remote forest lodge close to Way Kambas national park in Sumatra. It isn’t a typical tourist destination (this isn’t really a tourist park) and in fact we were almost the only people there. But not quite. There were two serious bird-watchers also staying, and so we shared a table at dinner. One was an Australian, and the other an American. And the American … (you may have guessed this already …) was Jared Diamond.

And while this doesn’t exactly compound the coincidence, the day we met was his seventy fifth birthday.

So there it is. I do have a coincidence to report to my editor. And of course I did bend the good professor’s ear about my story, and he nodded very sagely. ‘Absolutely,’ he told me. ‘That’s a very legitimate scenario.’

But the story isn’t quite over. When I told my editor my coincidence, she had one more twist to add. ‘I used to be Jared Diamond’s publicist,’ she told me. ‘I once took him to Cambridge.’

So how about that?

– John Ironmonger

About five years ago, my husband and I went to a local bar in Jersey City, NJ to have dinner. We began joking about how terrible some of the framed albums on the wall were, which entertained the couple sitting next to us enough that they joined our conversation, and we continued talking throughout our respective meals. (Five years later, we call this couple our best friends — we have done everything from cradling their two sons, to hunkering down in hurricanes together, to traveling through the South of France.) On the night we met, we eventually came around to where we’d all grown up — one in Syracuse, two in New Jersey — all relatively close by. When it was my turn, having grown up quite far away, I simply said “Just a small town in Massachusetts you’ve never heard of!” She responded, with a laugh, asking if I was from a town called Swansea. As I looked back, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and asked–incredulously–how she knew that?, she looked equally surprised her wild guess had turned out to be true, and went on to explain that her college roommate was from my hometown. (She also knew my first boyfriend, who’d gone to the same university, as well.) She knew many of the people I’d gone to high school with, and had visited my town before. My mother and her friend’s mother had been colleagues. I was floored. More incredibly, which we didn’t discover until much later, because of an event in her friend’s mother’s honour, she had been in the same room with my mother many years before the two of us met. We became fast friends following that evening, and the coincidences continued. Looking through photos of hers, I saw a face I recognized from work: Her husband’s best friend was about to marry my colleague’s best friend. Years later, after we moved to London, and they bought their beautiful house in the suburbs, my sister also moved to this same suburb to take a new job. She rented a room in a house — whose backyard backed into theirs. As she read me her new address, and I typed it into Google Maps, I gasped. I have begun to believe that the universe always had a plan for us — it was going to make us friends one way or another. Seeing we managed to sync up on its first try (as far as we know) it’s fun seeing the universe’s continued attempts. 🙂

– Marissa

This happened in the early 1980’s . It was the first event of this kind but it was not the last, and as years passed I became aware this kind of event had always been happening, they were invisible because they had been embedded in ordinary life events. My husband and I were on I-5 in heavy traffic. I was driving when I heard myself blurt out something I’d not thought about. “I don’t feel like my self any more, I’m going to change my name. I’m not Betty, I am Ju-Anna.” Just then a white van on the passenger side crossed in front of our van, dangerously close then crossed to the lane on my driver side and sped away. I saw the first vanity plate I’ve noticed, it read: DJWANNA. Instantly my mind translated the letters to Do You Want To? but a second later, a second sight event happened: I recognized the letters echoed, repeated back to me what I’d just said. I screamed as I sped up to see if I’d really seen what it seemed I’d seen: “Did YOU SEE THAT?” My passenger gripped the steering wheel and said: “Slow down do you want to get me killed?”

– Betty

I’d just been told that I had four months at most due to inoperable liver cancer and was sat at a bar drowning my sorrows and about to leave when in walked a surgeon I knew vaguely who told me he knew of a professor doing experimental surgery and would I like to meet him? Fourteen years later and I’m still here. That bar, that surgeon, when thirty seconds later I’d have left and missed him.

– Roy

I’m with Dr Post on coincidences. However life does throw us some curve balls. So here’s an interesting interaction of circumstances… I was given The Notable Brain.. for my birthday last year, and was interested to read that J W Ironmonger was brought up in Kenya and now lives in Shropshire. I was born in Nairobi in 1962, so lived there at the same time as J W Ironmonger. I too live in Shropshire. As the story deals with memories, I was intrigued and delighted by the number of memories it brought up for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and rated it highly. I have just read The Coincidence Authority (another cracking read) and last night reading in bed, I read the cover notes that mention the meeting with Jared Diamond. Another favourable interaction, as I have been reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. No coincidence just a neat little coming together of circumstances. Thanks for the entertainment and intriguing ideas…

– Jay

A lot of coincidences seem to happen to me whilst on holiday. One such incident was about 10 years ago whilst in America I was walking down a street with my family and we overtook another family strolling slower than us. The father in the family said to me as I walked passed..” I recognise you…you ride your bicycle down my road every Tuesday and Wednesday at 3.15pm.” Somewhat shocked I confirmed I did indeed ride down his road at this time on my way to work. From Crosby, Liverpool, England all the way to America, both of us, strangers to each other, were connected. I was just even more shocked he recognised me in shorts and T shirt when he would normally see me in full biking kit! I still ride down that rode every Tuesday and Wednesday at that time. I have never seen him but do wonder if he is watching me…

-Lindsay

We went to Australia in March of this year to visit our son who lives near to Brisbane.One day we drove two hours south from Brisbane to visit Springbrook National Park.When we got there we took one of the walking trails to see a waterfall,walking back to our car I saw three young women walking down towards us.One of the girls ,to my surprise ,was a nurse who works in the department next to the one I work in! A couple of weeks later into the holiday we drove two hours north of our base to spend a couple of nights in a place called Noosa Heads.We hired a boat for the morning,not in Noosa itself but in a much less touristy area a few miles away.On returning the boat we were walking back to the car when I spotted my former GP and her family having a picnic on the grass.She was even more surprised than me at our meeting as I had at least heard she had emigrated to Australia.She didnt live in the place that we met ,but had travelled there from around 20 miles away.The final coincidence as we got into the car was that they were parked next to us!

– Krystina

I met my future husband when he was 12. We were both born in Michigan, same county, and in the same year 1970. Later we married and divorced twice and had one child, a daughter in between. He had what one would call a restless soul but regardless of our relationship with others, we have always had a spiritual connection that just couldn’t be broke. Even though he moved quite often, we always stayed connected either spiritually or with an occational phone call. The last place he lived was in Charleston, South Carolina. After I moved back to Michigan and divorced him the second time in 2008, I vowed to myself that I was never going to return to Charleston because of our history together and he still resided there. I stuck to that vow until I was sitting at my desk at work and decided that I needed a vacation. Neither one of us had remarried and out of all of the choices I had to choose from, I kept on leaning towards Charleston. I was in a constant battle with myself, fighting my inner feelings, and hated the thought of breaking a vow I once made to myself but booked the flight and headed to Charleston in Septmber of 2013 anyway. I never told him I was coming and he never had any knowledge I was there in the same town. I stayed for a week and was supposed to fly out on a Wednsday. Again going thru the same battle with myself of why I even came there in the first place, I cancelled my flight and stayed another week. Three days later, I received a phone call that my exhusband died in a tragic motorcycle accident. Coincidence or fate?

– Sharon

I am studying ‘Double Consciousness’ as the historical pre-cursor to what became known as MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) and then, more recently DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). Double consciousness involves the same physical person have two separate states of being with different behaviors and memories. The historical field has a relatively small number of significant researching physicians, maybe 30 tops across 200 hundred years, so when I came across two ‘Princes’ – M.Prince and W.F.Prince (no relation), publishing on the subject at the same-ish time (1905 & 1917), and having just finished ‘The Coincidence Authority’ I found myself wondering what the chances of that were? One hour later I had come across two ‘Myers’ A.T.Myers and F.W.H.Myers again no relation and publishing in the same year (1886)…and now I’m writing to you having just discovered two ‘Mayos’ H.Mayo and T.Mayo (still no relation) publishing within ten years (1837 & 1845). So three sets of the same name, out of only 30 in total, all publishing within 12 years of each other out of a possible 200 years…do your stats on that and don’t tell me it’s only one because it’s already happened! Oh and also my friend Judy Holly is a friend of John’s but that’s not really a coincidence because she chose the book for our group.

– Jo

I am writing a PhD on ancient Greek art. I began to research some general theoretical approaches to art history and came across the name of an art historian called Erwin Panofsky. I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t heard of him before, though he is a significant figure in 20th century art history. The morning I came across him for the first time, I Googled and found one of his most seminal essays online. I left my desk to drop a book back to the college library and on my way out stopped at the book swap shelves (leave a book, take a book) just outside the library. On the top shelf, in the middle of a bunch of thrillers and chick lit, was a book of essays by Panofsky, the first one was the essay which was still open on my laptop upstairs.

– Jessica