BELIEVE IT OR NOT
Can you believe it?
At last week's meeting on 28th February, one of our guests was Stan Smith from Oswestry which is a small town of 18,000 people on the border of Wales and England. He was in Werribee visiting his nephew. He is a member of the Oswestry Borderland Rotary Club. There are another two Rotary clubs in the town.
During the week, we received an email from a lady called Denise Garner who said she and her husband, Arthur, both Rotarians, were visiting from the UK to see her son Mark (pictured above) who now lives in Werribee. She said they were from a town called Oswestry in the UK and would like to come to our meeting. At this point, one could be forgiven for thinking that there was a connection here. The very strong assumption was that Stan was related to Denise and Arthur and they were all here at the same time to visit the same person - Stan's nephew, Denise's son.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
When Denise, Arthur and Mark arrived at the meeting, they were asked about Stan. Denise looked at us with a quizzical expression and said "Who's Stan?" After further explanation about Stan's visit to our club the previous week, she said she didn't know who he was. He must have been visiting someone else in Werribee. She said it was possible that they may have crossed Rotary paths because Denise and Arthur are members of one of the other clubs, Oswestry Cambrian and occasionally the two clubs have joint meetings.
What an incredible coincidence.
We need a mathematician to calculate the odds of two Rotarians who hail from the same small town across the other side of the world, but don't know each other, visiting our club one week apart. We think the odds would be long. You might have a better chance of winning the lottery.