Six Degrees of Separation?

Hi Guys,
I got this bit from Wikipedia!

John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation

American playwright John Guare wrote a play in 1990 and later released a film in 1993 that popularized it. It is Guare's most widely-known work.

The play ruminates upon the idea that any two individuals are connected by at most five others. As one of the characters states:

I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it A) extremely comforting that we're so close, and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.

So, whats it got to do with me...

I had a really strange experience on Friday, I was standing beside a colleague just chatting as we were working and I asked what plans she had made for her next three day break. 'Oh,' she replied, 'I'm going down to our caravan, it's on the Kent border.'

The conversation went on for a bit and I mentioned that my siblings and I had once lived in Broadstairs in Kent, in a Childrens' Home in fact. She paled slightly as she turned to me and said, 'Don't tell me it was St. Marys?'  I was too stunned to reply for a moment, 'OMG,' I said eventually. Obviously from that you can gather we were in the same Childrens' Home and around about the same time. We went on to chat about how strange it was that in such a large international airport full of people we would not only be working in the same small team but would have known the same nuns, and walked the same halls years ago as children!

Front of St Mary's including the pond.

Back view. Can still remember our dorm!

I can hear the skeptics among you saying that we must have lived in the same area for the local authorities to place us together but no, my colleague hails from Wigan and I come from Surrey! Anyway, I had some photo's of it on my phone as I'd gone on a memory mission last summer. It's disused now but still a beautiful building. We talked for a while about some of the random things we remembered, like the penny put under your plate on Christmas Day Breakfast which meant you could open your presents first, and the huge Easter Egg that was donated every yer by a local shop. The crocodile walk in hats and gloves to church every Sunday and the bacon fat we soaked our bread in after breakfast. Then the stone stairway that led down to the beach. I remember the stair as being a strange and magical pathway, with high walls either side of the stone steps that led on up or down  forever and a white sandy beach where we were taught to carve the chalk rocks into faces.

To go up from the beach!

OK, so that may just be a coincidence but as we chatted we discovered we were also in the same Childrens home in Hindhead in Surrey, just by the Devil's Punchbowl. The difference being that we both had extremely  fond memories of St Mary's and the very kind and caring Nuns, where those from Hillgarth, the home at Hindhead, were not so good. Apart from the library at Hillgarth, where I discovered the world of books from the Secret Seven series by Enid Blyton to The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien and a childrens version of Lorna Doone,  by R D Blackmore. The only good memories I have of Hillgarth are the grounds and a fort built in the woods for us children by one of the care workers and walking in the Devils Punchbowl itself, eating the blueberries straight off the bushes and my brother losing the sole from his shoe and having to be the original member of the ministry of silly walks until we got back. Oh and I remember a girl called Gwendoline, who taught us kids how to play Jack Stones on the huge playroom table. Hillgarth isn't there anymore, there's a housing estate built on the site, it too was a lovely building but ... OK so I really am rambling on now! lol

Strange though isn't it. Six degrees and all that!

Has anyone else had a similar experience of the six degrees thing? Let me know, it would make interesting reading.

Got to go....

Byeeeeeeeeeeee.... :)