My regular readers (I'm pretending that people other than my mam read this on a regular basis, rather than being referred by searches for "pope tea", amongst other things . . .) might recall that I went to Berlin over Easter. I wrote up a sort of travel diary while we were there, and this is from the actual journey into Berlin from the airport (which was massively complicated because parts of the S-bahn and U-bahn track were closed):

"At each wait for every bus or train I was worrying about invalidating our hostel reservation through lateness. At one point we were sat on a motionless train for about 10 minutes. Thankfully, I wasn't the only confused one: a boy of about 18 with bleached-blond hair and a pack on his back with a "National Youth Orchestra" sticker on it (I still say it was a bassoon) got out of his seat to scrutinise the map above the doors and said to us in a overly-concerned, Wirralite accent, "Is this train even going anywhere?" He was trying to get to Warschauer Strasse, which we'd never heard of. Once he calmed down and the train actually got going, we heard him babbling away on his mobile in German and were instantly jealous."

I bring this up now, because we were watching TV while eating dinner. The judges were deliberating Young Musician of the Year 2008, and the winner of 2006 came onto the stage to perform. I stared at the screen and said, "Ian, do you think that's —"
"Yes," came the reply.

It turns out that our Scouser in Berlin is in fact called Mark Simpson, and a clarinettist (damn it) who won when he was 17.

Bizarre who you bump into.