Bumping into people I know is one of the things I love about being at home in Devon. I may live on a farm with the nearest neighbours a good few hundred metres away but I still know them better than my next door neighbours from my time in London or Bath. It has always baffled me that the more dense the population the less people I seem to know and that is part of the reason I get excited if I bump into someone in an unexpected place.
A few weeks ago I was in Lausanne, Switzerland representing the BOA athletes commission for just two days. As I was checking out on the last morning a girl tentatively came and asked me if I was Heather, and then apologetically asked if I remembered her. I was racking my brains but early in the morning in a foreign country I was struggling to find any connections. Feeling slightly embarrassed I had to admit that I didn't recognise her but she soon put me out of my misery when she introduced herself. It all came flooding back although I think I can be excused as she was a close neighbour of my grandparents who I haven't seen for over twenty years. She is from Chagford and moving to Australia; what were the chances of bumping into her in a hotel lobby in Switzerland?
A less dramatic coincidence happened just a few days after when I was on my way home from Belfast. I'd been trying to arrange a meeting with someone in London but coordinating our diaries was proving difficult. After I had a flight cancelled I ended up flying the next day and found myself in Belfast airport at the same time. It is a small world.
