Back in my home town, they say "It's not a small world, it's just a big Minehead." That's exactly how I felt today when I received a comment on this website website to a post I had left from Gary Young who I met whilst surfing at a famous North Devon secret spot just before New Year (see his picture opposite). Not only that, but a reminder to send him a particular link. The world is getting ever smaller with the internet. Blogging and forums are only facilitating that development.

However, in October, it happened to Michelle and I even without the internet when we were up in the Outer Hebrides on a surf trip. I got a call from one of the law editors at The Times newspaper for whom I was doing an article on wigs of all things telling me that there was another lawyer who surfed...who also wrote for The Times...who was also apparently in the Outer Hebrides. Well, she gave me his number and I called it immediately. I spoke to him and explained what I'd been told. Without flinching, he simply said, "I know. You're sitting in a cafe in Stornaway on the Isle of Lewis, aren't you?" "How do you know that?" came the slightly shocked response. "Because we're sitting on the table next to you!" That was my first meeting with author Alex Wade and his family. Definitely a small world and we couldn't have been further away from the internet. Perhaps each generation thinks the world is getting smaller as they get older and they have the pleasure of experience such occasional coincidences.