24.5.2009

Yarmouth Trail

    Yarmouth Trail

http://www.netsaga.is/media/files/Leaving-edit.mp3


    A traveller's tale comes from ex-RAF man David Furlonger, who runs David's Seafood Kitchen, in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales. One night in August 1986, he was chef on duty at his restaurant. It was a cold and miserable night, raining heavily. -We had only a commercial traveller and a couple in the restaurant, he recalled. My wife who was doing the waitressing came into the kitchen and said, -The couple out there has an unusual English accent.

    - I went out to have a chat with them. They were from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and were on an 8 week holiday in Australia. I said to the man, -I served with a man from Great Yarmouth for 4 and a half years in Burma in the RAF and we kept in touch from 1946 to 1950. I then came to live in Australia and have not heard of him since. It is just on the off-chance that I mention this to you.

    He said: -What was his name? I said he was chief officer in the Yarmouth fire brigade and his name was Cyril Aldred.

    His reply astounded me, -I have recently retired from the Yarmouth fire brigade and I worked with Cyril for the past 26 years! Cyril, now in his 70's, when he and his wife had a 2 mont holiday of their own. Consider the circumstances. If the restaurant had been busy David would not have spoken to the couple, his wife mau hot have even bothered commenting on the unusual accent, or had time to do so until after the r. had closed. By then it may have slipped her mind anyway. Coffs Harbour is a tourist town and there are plenty of r. The odds against the travelling couple picking David's place are therefore high. Like so many coincidences it can be analysed to the nth degree without either detracting from its qualities or finding any logic to it. Who would want to?

 

    100-year-old Score Settled

    In 1977 Australia and England the world's two oldest cricket rivals, played in a centenary test. Both the 1877 and 1977 matches were played in Melbourne in March on the Melbourne cricket ground. In the latter England going into their second innings, needed 463 runs to win in 590 minutes-not an impossible task but no side in Test history had achieved it. At one stage it looked as though the Englishmen would actually manage it, as Derek Randall took the Australian bowling apart and scored 174. But Dennis Lillee pulled out all the stops and England finally went for 417 and Australia won by 45 runs-exactly the margin by which Australia had won 100 years earlier. As all followers of the game know, there are many permutations fo an outcome for this historic game resulted in a coincidence.

 

    Bookmark

    Not all crimes in which coincidence plays a part are major ones. Early in Jan 1989, 3 women from a travel agency were discussing their favourite books during their lunch-break. Riders the book by Jilly Cooper came up and Gabrielle Thackray said she would lend it to Nikki O'Shea, when she got it back from a friend she had loaned it to more than a month before. Later that day, Nikki walked into a second-hand bookshop and saw a copy of Riders reduced in price. The flyleaf bore the name: Gabrielle Thackray.

 

    Four Rules

    Angie Hartnell and Ricky Todd aho had lived for years 4 miles apart were both born on 4 Oct 1980 and married on 4 Oct 1982. They had 4 bridesmaids and 4 ushers at the church in Silverton, Devon. They said the 4 Oct events in their lives were coincidence. They hoped to have 4 children.

 

    Cell-mates

    In 1965 Professor John McAleer of Massachusettes received a letter from prisoner Billy Dickson in response to a review the prof. had written of a book by Theodore Dreiser. McA. replied and a correspondence developed which eventually produced a total of 1200 letters. For the first 3 months McA did not ask D. what he had done to deserve the jail sentence, or even hoe much time he had to serve. D finally told him in a letter in which he said he appreciated that M had not probed into these matters.

    - On 12 June 1956 I held up the Centreville Trust and gpt away with $10000. I took a bank officer hostage but let him go a little while later, unharmed. That night M told his wife he was corresponding with the man who had held up her sister. He wrote to D and explained the circumstances, adding: -A friend , a probability expert told me that life was filled with million to one chances waiting their turn to happen...

    M later helped turn a mauscript on D Korean was experiences into a saleable book. He says of the whole saga: -Life sometimes serves up odd coincidences that writers are unwilling to credit.