THE THING ABOUT COINCIDENCES

...is that they’re rarely as charming in real life as they are in bad romantic comedies. In those cinematic atrocities, two people reach for the same stale croissant at a Parisian café, their hands brush, and mwah! Soulmates, destined for a lifetime seemingly exempt from the mundane. House band jam sessions, such as “reconciling different standards of cleanliness”, the “slow erosion of personal space”, your typical “who ate my leftovers” saga, and, not least, the music of "nocturnal irritations such as snoring and random but sudden shifts in atmospheric pressure" …these are all songs unsung when the credits roll and obscure our view. Real coincidences usually involve something far less picturesque, like discovering you’ve both purchased the exact same hideous ceramic mallard from a dusty antique shop in Ramsgate and then being forced to acknowledge this shared lapse in judgment for the remainder of your acquaintance.

However.

Sometimes, you live to tell the tale of encountering a truly crazy coincidence, the kind that makes you briefly question the very fabric of reality before concluding that sometimes, “reality” simply takes a day off. And that very day begins, as so many days do, with a desperate yearning for a decent cup of coffee. I should acknowledge that in these times of bespoke brews and beans blessed by woodland creatures with impeccable fair-trade credentials, “a decent cup of coffee” carries the quaint aroma of a forgotten century. But in my corner of Edinburgh, finding a cup of coffee that doesn’t taste of desperate pretention and thirst for acceptance, is back-breaking work. Go on, prove me wrong.

So, I’m hoofing it down Lothian, skillfully dodging swarming tourists en route, their oblivious and unpredictable moves having the potential to stop you in your tracks at any given moment. Not today, travelling trippers, I’m on a quest! After a complex pedestrian ballet, lengthy and graceless in equal measure, I finally stumble upon a new place as yet unburdened by my prejudice.

Hmm...

“The Gilded Bean” or some such nonsense. The sign has that minimalist font that instantly lets you know your overpriced coffee will be served in a beaker by a barista with a handlebar mustache, which is... oh, no... waxed with artisanal beard balm made from the tears of free-range unicorns? Oh well, “Gilded bean”, you had your chance.

However, what with me being desperate and out of options at this point, I reluctantly open the door and enter the establishment.

As I’m waiting for my order, radiating the impatience of a ruthless editor furiously red-penning every slow-moving moment of existence, my gaze drifts to the other patrons. There’s a woman entering a toxic relationship with her avocado toast, revealing the power dynamics of their situation as her intense gaze seem to imply said toast needs to “make love to her camera phone”. I might've extrapolated just a little… A pompous man with aggressively trendy eyewear that screams of self-proclaimed superiority is engaging in an “important business call”. I can tell, because he is loudly broadcasting his commitment to “synergy” and “actionable insights” to the entire café.

But wait…

My eyes have wandered over to an unassuming man-lad in the corner. He sits at a small table by the window, nursing a cup of what appears to be unadulterated coffee and reading a book. With pages. The kinds that you turn by hand, not swipe with the lazy flick of a lethargic index finger. In this temple built for snobby taste buds, he stands out.

What truly arrests my attention, though, is the book itself. It’s a collection of essays by a writer I’ve long admired, a woman whose sharp wit and even sharper observations about the human condition have provided me with countless hours of sardonic amusement. I recognize the cover, a faded photo of her looking utterly unimpressed, which, frankly, is her default expression. Now, the fact that this stranger is reading precisely that book is already a bit of a head-scratcher. But what happens next propels us into the realm of the truly bizarre.

Just as the unicorn-mustached barista presents me with my beaker of elevated coffee - which incidentally tastes like regular coffee save for being unreasonably priced and arriving in a beaker - the unassuming man-lad by the window closes his book and looks up. Our eyes meet.

“Excuse me,” he says with a voice that, much to my relief, lacks any artisanal affectation. “I couldn’t help but notice… is that a taxidermied squirrel brooch you’re wearing?”

Now, let the record show that I am, indeed, wearing a taxidermied squirrel brooch. It was a gift from a dear friend with a proclivity for the peculiar, and I wear it ironically as a small act of rebellion against the relentless tide of good taste.

“Why, yes,” I reply, slightly taken aback. “As a matter of fact, I am. This is Roland.”

The man’s eyes widen as he repeats “Roland?” with reverence, as if the name holds profound significance.

“Well,” I say with a flicker of unease. “That’s what I call him.”

My confirmation seems to excite him as he hurriedly scuffles around his tote bag and pulls out… another taxidermied squirrel brooch! This whippersnapper is slightly different though, with glass eyes the startling shade of emerald green, wearing the tiniest monocle imaginable and sporting a top hat perched jauntily on its head.

“This,” he announces, holding it aloft as if it were the Holy Grail, “is Eugene.”

We quietly stare at each other, awe struck. Our animation suspended in the charged silence between two strangers connected by their appreciation for obscure essayists and deceased, bejeweled rodents in all their disquieting charm. Time passes by, unnoticed.

“This is… odd,” I finally manage.

“Odd?” he exclaims, perhaps a little too enthusiastically for comfort. “This is beyond odd! This is… cosmic! Destiny! Or, you know, possibly just a remarkable, emphatically singular and undeniably strange coincidence.”

He then proceeds to tell me that he had found Eugene at a flea market in Prague, nestled within a pile of crocheted doilies and menacing-looking porcelain dolls. Meanwhile, my Roland had been acquired from an online collector of “whimsical oddities”, a woman out of Plockton in the highlands who claims to communicate with the spirit world through interpretive dance. From here, as you might imagine, the conversation only escalates in strangeness.

What are the odds of discovering that two strangers both harbour a deep loathing for motivational speakers, frequently indulge in creating elaborate backstories for store mannequins and have an inexplicable ability to identify the subtle nuances of the various coos and calls of urban pigeons?

That wasn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely asking.

He introduces himself as August, and in the next hour we unearth a veritable treasure trove of bizarre commonalities. We had both, at different times, owned a pet dog named Noam Chompsky. We both consider restroom graffiti a form of zeitgeist art and sociological commentary. And, most astonishingly, one time we both accidentally attended a convention for competitive thumb wrestling, believing it to be a cheese and wine festival. When I leave “The Gilded Bean” I am feeling as if I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole, August and I have exchanged numbers and have tentatively agreed to meet again. To cross-reference our collections of orphaned novelty salt and pepper shakers, as you do.

One might think - and it would be perfectly reasonable to do so - that this is where the story ends; a quirky meet-cute predicated on dead squirrels and other shared oddities. But, oh no. The Universe, it seems, holds within it additional strata of strangeness as yet to unfold.

A few weeks later, I find myself at a rather dreary art gallery opening in Leith, an obligation I couldn’t gracefully evade. As I attempt to navigate the crowded room, balancing a glass of lukewarm white wine and trying to look as though I understand the profound artistic statement being made by a pile of discarded traffic cones, I hear a familiar voice.

“Lotta?”

I turn around to find August, wearing the same expression of bewilderment as when last I saw him.

“August! What are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know,” he says, gesturing vaguely at a sculpture made of old shopping carts. “My aunt knows the artist. Dragged me along.”

Now, what typically follows in instances like these is the exchange of predictable pleasantries. The engaging in small talk about weather, local news and other etceteras. But we are two people who’ve bonded over the bizarre and who are now those same two people in a decidedly less bizarre setting. Within the borders of our quantum pocket, the natural order of things has been disrupted and we find ourselves grasping. Grasping for familiarity in an awkward liminal space, decidedly devoid of any weather-esque subject matters to lean on.

Thankfully, that is when, just in the nick of time, the Universe delivers the pièce de résistance of its Magnum Opus: this cosmic chain of awesominous events in which I've been an unwitting participant.

The artist, a young man with a confusing amount of hair gel and an air of intense self-importance, approaches.

“August!” he exclaims, embracing him with an enthusiasm that seems suspiciously exaggerated for dramatic effect. “So glad you could make it! And who is this?”

“This is Lotta,” says August. “Lotta, this is… Lysander.”

Lysander, still clinging to August with unwarranted intensity, turns to me. “Lotta,” he says with initial measure which, as his head turns, transforms into a gasp and widening of eyes. “That brooch! Is that… Roland?!”

I blink. “You know Roland?”

Lysander’s face breaks into a bright smile. “Know him? I made Roland! And Eugene! And Bartholomew, this badger here with the tiny smoking jacket!” he says, pointing towards a badger with a tiny smoking jacket.

It turns out that Lysander isn’t just the creator of profound artistic statements involving discarded municipal waste we have all come to know him as. He is also the woman in Plockton who runs the online shop of “whimsical oddities” and communes with spirits through interpretive dance!

The coincidence had not only connected August and me, two oddballs in a city full of them. It had circled back and included the very person responsible for one of the key elements of our initial encounter. So we stand there, the three of us, amidst the pretentious art and the lukewarm wine, a tableau of improbable interconnectedness. August and I stare at Lysander, who gleams with the self-satisfaction of a puppet master revealing his strings. The Universe, clearly, has a perverse sense of humour.

“Well,” I finally let out, breaking the stunned silence. “This is… uh, certainly something.”

August nods slowly, his eyes glazing over with a mixture of disbelief and a dawning sense of cosmic unease.

Lysander however, unfazed and oblivious to our existential quandary, launches into a detailed explanation of the artistic vision behind a sculpture made entirely of used dental floss.

And so, with these crazy coincidences unfurled and the layers of improbable connections revealed, I am reminded that sometimes, reality can be far stranger than any work of fiction. And maybe, just maybe, my friend’s taste in morbid jewellery isn’t quite as peculiar as I thought. Though I still draw the line at the badger in the smoking jacket. Some things are just inherently wrong. Even for crazy coincidences.