Coincidences

I'm not a religious person so I don't see God's hand in them and I don't believe that events are pre-destined to happen in the exact manner of a prior plan or formula but I have two recent coincidences that have spooked me out. Some things seem coincidences when there not such as the odds that two people share a birthday, for example, reaches 50% with a group of just 22 but others I can't account for.

The first was on Sunday night when I was discussing the age of my landlady's dog and told her that her dog must be nearing her centenary in human years. The next day I got an email of her telling me that her dog was 100 exactly on the day before. I know little of dog/human years so had not done any calculations!

The second was a few months back. My then girlfriend had taken her son to school and I was at a loose end so got started reading a book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E.Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) his account of the Arabia campaign in the Great War. When she came back we walked into town and passed the war memorial. Looking at it it said that it was unveiled by the Chief of Staff General Allenby. I commented that Allenby was Lawrence's superior officer during the Arabia campaign and that I had just read about him. I bought myself a Guardian and started reading it when I got home and inside there was a pullout of archive stories from throughout the Guardian's history. One of the stories was on the funeral of Lawrence and quoted Allenby's eulogy that he gave at the funeral. Spooky eh?