Recently, I was telling my family an interesting bit of research I’d found that day, about wartime defences on the Suffolk coast, such as the Sound Mirrors of Dungeness. These are giant concrete structures there from the 1930s, designed to reflect engine motor noises from out at sea into specially tuned microphones. The intention was to hear enemy planes before they arrived to prepare.
Those defences were never used during wartime ā radar was invented soon after as a much more accurate system ā but the walls are still there after over 90 years.
Anyway, as I was telling my family about this over dinner, the television was on at the same time with Jim Moir in the BBC’s Walking With… series, making his way around the Kentish coast. We weren’t really paying attention to it, but I could see the screen out of the corner of my eye.
As I was telling them about these defences, what should come onto the screen but the very stone walls and parabolic shapes of the Sound Mirrors that I was describing! I was pretty surprised, as was the rest of my family.
It has led me to wonder though, how frequently do coincidences like that actually happen? I can’t recall with any certainty another time like that, but surely they just happen pretty frequently. Where you are and what you’re doing influence your discussions, so it stands to reason that there is a more frequent chance of coincidence. For example, my coincidence happened because I was holidaying by the sea, so I was inclined to learn more about the coast, leading to this nugget of information.
Doesn’t that bring up an even bigger question? If the chance of a coincidence is raised by your actions, is it even a coincidence at all? Do we control what happens around us? Is free will an illusion? Is Vic Reeves a deity living amongst us under an alter egoā½ š
Anyway… Metaphysical authoritarianism orchestrated by comics aside, it is a curious thing to experience a true, surprising coincidence.
If you wanted to learn about the Sound Mirrors, presenter Tom Scott has an excellent video on it:
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