Harry posted yesterday about an extraordinary coincidence. I have one to match it. It is in the days running up to Christmas 1970, and WotN and I (long before she was WotN though not long after we were married) have gone to the NFT to see Claude Chabrol's Le Boucher. Standing around in the foyer before we go in, we run into an old friend of my family's, Roy Caplan, who is with another family friend, Ilona. Roy is from Johannesburg and I haven't seen him for I don't remember how long. He's visiting London. Big hellos and general delight all round. This is on the evening of 22 December.
The following morning Adèle and I have arranged to meet my Mom's cousin Mitzi for tea, at a well-known department store near Finchley Road tube station - if I'm not mistaken, John Barnes. As we're coming out of the tube, who should we see on his way in? Yes, it's Roy Caplan again. So we stop and say hello a second time, all remarking on what a coincidence it is that we should have chanced to see each other twice like that within so short a space of time.
The afternoon after this - on Christmas Eve - we're queueing with our friend Lionel, aka Lemmy the Bleet, outside a cinema in Leicester Square. We're waiting to see Hawks's Rio Lobo, and I'm telling Lionel the Roy Caplan story. You know...
As we come out of Finchley Road tube, lo and behold - who should be on his way in but Roy Caplan again?!And I kid you not, as the saying goes, but as I'm telling Lionel of this second meeting with Roy Caplan, and with the words 'Roy Caplan' barely out of my mouth, Roy Caplan comes ambling along the pavement, passing by the cinema outside which we are queuing. Huge merriment.
I think that's a pretty good sequence. It has become part of the family lore.
(A footnote to the story is that on the second of the three days I'm talking about here, after having tea with Mitzi, Adèle and I went to see Catch-22. And on the third day - Christmas Eve - after seeing the Howard Hawks with Lionel, we went back to my Dad's place, where we were staying for those few days, and watched (on TV) Huston's Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison and Hitchcock's Under Capricorn. That's five in three days. We had some movie-watching drive, and stamina, in those days.)