I was doing another shift at the University today, helping with the ongoing Windows 11 migration project. This afternoon, we welcomed another staff member in to drop off their laptop and she paused in the door and asked, “do I recognise you from somewhere?” Cogs in both our heads were turning. I was running through people I’ve met over the past five years that I’ve been in Loughborough but it was when she asked if I’d been to the University of York that the penny dropped. I think that’s a forgivable pause when you’ve not seen someone for over thirty years.

I wonder how many other friends and colleagues from places I’ve been in the past are moving in circles not so very far from my own? Social media tools like Facebook, and the more professionally-focused LinkedIn, even the odds of discovery a little but only where there are connecting people. Also, with the fire hydrant rate at which snippets of information about friends and gallons of marketing and AI generated junk gush past, those opportunities for discovery seem to spread increasingly thin again.

We end up back to old-fashioned serendipity and perhaps that isn’t entirely a bad thing.