Roots of Coincidence

I ordered a second-hand copy today from Amazon of a book I've been meaning to read for years. It's by Arthur Koestler and the title is "Roots of Coincidence". I'm not even sure what this book is about but I have an impression that I had a copy in my hand long ago and never quite settled down to read it.

'Coincidences' are something I've always been very aware of. We use the word without thinking but I'm never sure where they starts and end or what they might be. There have been events in my life where these questions have really come up for me in a big way. Probably it's the same for everyone.

The time that the profundity of the experience of 'coincidence' first really dawned on me was when my son was born in 1976. There were serious, life-threatening complications for him and he needed surgery quickly . He was whisked away by ambulance to a specialist hospital about thirty miles away from our town and close to the city where my 'in-laws' lived.

I didn't even know where it was and I suppose I was in shock but I realised after I'd walked home from our local maternity unit that I had to get in touch with my mother-in-law quickly and that we needed to get to this place fast. My wife had been kept in the local hospital to recover so it was down to us to act.

The problem was that they had no phone.

But there was a social club nearby that my father-in-law sometimes visited and on the back of our phone book I noticed amongst lots of other scrawls a Swansea area number scribbled in pencil. Perhaps that was it! So I rang the number and after a few rings a voice answered. "Is that the SCS Club?" I asked.

A voice on the other end of the phone said "Iain? Is that you??"

It was my young brother in law. He'd just been cycling past a local telephone box at the end of the road, heard the phone ring and thought 'I have to answer that'. He went home, got my mother-in-law to ring me back and we were soon on our way to the hospital just in time to sign the consent paperts for an urgently needed operation.

I have no idea what 'coincidence' is, but I do know for sure that 'coincidences happen'.