Under one (blue! yippee!) sky

Once, under a sky like this on the Acropolis, I spotted someone I'd been on a course with in Cheltenham. Later, under another blue sky, this time in Dubrovnik, I bumped into the person who'd lived that year across the corridor from me in our student hall of residence. I was hitching round Europe; she was on a very youthful honeymoon. A few years on, in the middle of the Sinai desert, my sister and I were trying to avoid a dodgy-looking taxi driver who seemed intent on pursuing us. He caught up with us and turned out to be a mate of our brother's. When I did my PGCE, there were six in my tutor group and the three women had been to the same primary school. The older one had bullied me, the younger had been my brother's PE partner.

Last week on blip I discovered that aprecious and I have both lived on the same road in Manchester, decades apart. So it's barely a surprise that when TyTe subscribed to my journal this week I should find out that he knows my son.

I often look at strangers in the street and wonder what our points of contact are. I often look at a place and wonder which old friend passed this way two minutes ago. I'm sure that some of you looking at this picture have sat in the same pub, been at the same gig, or attended the same conference as me. Six degrees of separation? Pah! Nothing like...