Of all the gin-joints in all the towns...

Thank you to everyone who said kind things, here and elsewhere, about the previous post. I wanted to make some sort of record of Marie and who she was in my life (that is, of one aspect of her life). You make me feel that I have succeeded, and I'm grateful to you for it. Today's post, though, is more cheerful.

We went out yesterday to lunch with our friend S., who does not LJ. This was a dual purpose excursion: to eat an enjoyable lunch out, and to catch up on each other's news, because although S. lives in Newcastle, she is celebrating her retirement by studying for an MA at Leeds, so during term time she is away in Leeds for half of each week week. Things worked out rather well for her accommodation in Leeds: she was about to post an advertisement, asking if anyone had a spare room they would like to let, when she noticed that someone had already posted the other side of the same request: a woman whose husband worked away from home during the week, and who wanted a lodger who would go home at weekends.

I already knew this story, and that S. would be traveling back to Leeds after our lunch - by train, she told us. I asked whether she missed having her car for driving around town during the week. No, she said, not really, "because my landlady gives me a lift to town in the mornings when she drives down to her health food shop." Suddenly, this was familiar ground, and durham_rambler and I reacted simultaneously. "Oh," I said, "she runs a health food shop?" And while S. was confirming this, durham_rambler was already onto the next question: "Is she by any chance Chinese?"

"Well," said Sue, rather as if this were a negative, "she's of Chinese extraction, but her name is — — " where the first — is a Chinese forename, and the second — is my surname. And, while I'm still saying, yes, of course, because I know who this is, she continued: "But that's her married name, her husband's name is —". Of course it is - because he's named after his grandfather, who was my uncle.

I'd better clarify that I've never met S.'s landlady; I have met her husband, but long ago at a family gathering - if I met him in the street, I don't suppose I'd recognise him (though I might identify him as family). Nonetheless, we are cousins - second cousins, if you are picky, but I'm not. And I love coincidences, love that they happen and that they are coincidence, they have no meaning beyond what we attach to them