The WWOOFer, the FiNZ and the chain gang

There is nothing that my Friend in New Zealand (AKA the FiNZ) and, indeed, many of my friends, and I like more than a tale of coincidence, synchronicity, or six degrees of separation. I'm never sure whether to attribute the fascination I have with these notions to my early love affair with the great Victorian novelists, many of whom thrived on the stuff, or the story I was told by one of my first bosses. As well as teaching me everything she knew about working with the media, she also kept me entertained with a plethora of Fleet Street stories and sayings, from the time when all our national newspapers were actually produced there - or as near there as makes no difference.

Given my predilection for the above, this was my favourite: 'There are only thirty-two people in the world and, sooner or later, you meet them all.'  I may not have the number exactly right; it is, after all, more than thirty years since I first heard it but you get the idea. The words are those of Louis Heren, one of this country's most distinguished journalists, who worked for The Times for almost 50 years.

Tales of coincidence are best savoured, I always think, when they come out of the blue, as the one I am about to relate did . . .

'We've got a WWOOFer* from New Zealand staying with us for a while,' said my Smallholder Friend, on our most recent weekly get-together, when we set out for a trudge across muddy fields a bracing walk with our Labradors, together with Basil, one of my canine guests. 

'Oh, whereabouts in New Zealand?' I asked.

'Somewhere near Nelson, I think,' said my Smallholder Friend.

'Ah, that's where the FiNZ is,' I replied, my Smallholder Friend having met the FinNZ when she was in England a couple of years ago. 'In fact, she was a sort of WWOOFer, when she first moved there. She went to stay on . . .' and I mentioned the type of farm where the FiNZ had lived and worked. 'What's his name?'

My Smallholder Friend told me and said she would ask her WWOOFer if, by any remote chance, he had come across the FiNZ and I said I would do likewise, although both of us thought it highly unlikely that they had met, Nelson having a popuation of about 60,000. Our questions were, we felt sure, going to receive a similar response to the one that travellers give when they are asked: 'So, you're from X? Hey, I have a brother-in-law called John Smith in X. I don't suppose you've come across him?' (For X, substitute the name of any city with at least several million inhabitants.)

But not this time.

The WWOOFer did, indeed, know the FiNZ and had met her several times . . .

This information arrived via email early on Saturday evening just as I was finishing my previous blogpost and I could hardly wait to tell the FiNZ, for whom it was already Sunday morning, and who - by chance, of course - just happened to be checking her messages. We exchanged a rapid flurry of questions and answers. Yes, yes, she knew the WWOOFer and his family, whose land just happened to adjoin the farm where she had stayed. She had fed their chickens when they were away and even, on one occasion, employed 'some fancy footwork and elaborate planning' in herding her farm's small flock of sheep to the WWOOFer's family land to graze.

We both agreed that what was needed now, at our respective ends of the globe was a pot of strong tea and a sit-down to contemplate the relatively small number of people and the equally small chain of events that spanned 11,000 miles of land and sea, connecting a woman, originally from Zambia - who had travelled from South Africa to live in New Zealand, and who had stayed on a farm in a very quiet valley, on the outskirts of Nelson - with a young man from the very same spot and who had travelled across the world to stay on a smallholding in a quiet valley in Devon.

Before we sat down with the tea, however, I mentioned that she might enjoy the post I'd just written because it was a subject close to her heart - dark skies, environmental responsibility, carbon reduction and so on. (At this point, you need to scroll down to the previous post or click on this link to see - and hear if you wish - the song that it includes.)

Fifteen minutes later she was back online: ' I read your blogpost and I'm in the kitchen making tea . . . listening to Radio NZ National . . . and . . . WHAT do they play?'

I suspect, dear readers, that you already know the answer. And you would be right.

*You can read more about World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) here.

Comments

[Friend In New Zealand]

:-) - there's no such thing as coincidence!