Coincidence

Many years ago, I shared a house in Oxford with a close friend who had just had twins. Her partner of the time hadn’t been able to cope with the complex responsibilities of becoming a father, and had buggered off into the great unknown, so for nearly a year I shared a house with her, and helped with the first year of the twins’ lives. It was a fantastic – if utterly chaotic- time, as I’d just come out of a set of jobs managing pubs and hotels, where I ended up utterly hating people. (and children in particular)

I’d emphatically had enough of hellspawn brats who were allowed to run amok while their parents got pissed at the bar, or while they had a ‘quiet’ meal in the restaurant. It was only quiet becuase their snot-gobbling little mini-demons were – you guessed it – running amok elsewhere. The last place I’d been managing before jacking it all in entirely had also had a kids play area of the ‘Wacky Warehouse’ type, which was deemed to be pretty much Hell on Earth so far as I was concerned.

So when life conspired to put me in a house with two very young babies (we’re talking about two weeks old, at most) it was quite a double-edged sword. I didn’t know whether I’d be able to cope, but it was something I had to try. In general I do like children, and get on well with them (some would say it’s down to similar mental ages) and I wanted to know whether the events and lows of the previous three years had caused me permanent damage on that score.

As it turned out, they hadn’t. That year with the twins was great, bringing them up, dealing with all the normal joys – sleep, illness, nappies- amd sp pm. as well as starting off on a track that was very new at the time- websites. Yes, that was the year that did one hell of a lot of the grundwork to bring me to where I am now. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?

At the end of the year, though, things changed. The father came back on the scene, having now decided he was ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood- and for reasons I’ll never really understand (not that I really think about them any more) my friend took him back in, and let him come back into their lives. Of course, this also meant that I was now kind of surplus to requirements, so I took my leave, and moved on.

I stayed in touch for a while, but never went back to see them, or the twins. I knew they moved away, somewhere out in the country, but never really made any effort to stay in touch after that – and it was reciprocal, they never stayed in touch with me.

On a whim this week, though, I had a look using the power of t’internet, to see whether they’re still together, that kind of guff. A couple of Google searches, and one through 192.com.

The results? Well, they’re still together, which is great – and I’m pleased to see it. It means they got over those initial problems, and that she was right to take him back. But the real “Bloody Hell!” bit is that they’re in Norfolk. And they live in the village between where we live now, and where we’ve bought the house.

I’m not going to go looking, but I suppose that the odds are high that we may one day collide. I wonder if I’d recognise them? I wonder if they’d recognise me?