What are the odds?

Today, in Grenoble, I saw someone who I thought looked familiar.

I thought she was a girl to whom I had given a Dublin tour about two years ago. Weird, I know.

She (and her boyfriend and mother) stayed in the pub where I work for about an hour, I’d say, during which time I perceived one or two quizzical glances from her. 

With those, my intuition seemed more probable, but it wasn’t until they were about to leave when I realised…

Her boyfriend came up to the bar and ask me, in French: ‘are you Irish?’, ‘did you use to give tours in Dublin?’. Smiling uncontrollably in knowing, I ‘yessed’ his eager asks. He was about to ask me another question, or pose something assez verbal or assez physical to me – quite a jealous guy, I reckon – but he held back.

Then, the girl (I say ‘girl’, she’s in her 20s) and her mother came up to the bar and wanted to confirm it for themselves. Needless to say, they seemed less fraught in asking. As it happens, a girl and her mother to whom I gave a tour, and subsequent pub crawl, about two years ago, in Dublin, find me, working in a bar, in Grenoble, as she starts her Erasmus semester as a psychology student in Grenoble. It’s difficult to believe.

On the other hand, I have given tours to a few thousand people so I suppose such a ‘coincidental’ occurrence was bound to happen sometime!

No doubt it’ll happen again – I can’t imagine too many people thinking ‘Is that the guy who gave me a Dublin tour a couple years ago? Nah, I’m sure there are loads of people who give Dublin tours, from Donegal, over 6ft3, with an unmistakable accent, and long, flowing red-golden curls?’

Ok, maybe the last part was a little too detailed.