Tri coincidentals

Everyone knows creativity warps the space-time continuum or at least makes you pay attention to coincidences in a slightly more obsessive way than usual. Everyone, even dogs. When you're very focussed on a project, quite often little reinforcements will show up suggesting you're on the right track (excuse gratuitous rail-based punning), and this project has been no exception. Here are the three surviving members of The Coincidences, a super-smooth soul combo you may remember from 70s TOTP.

1. Three Men on a Boat: one of our initial impulses was to echo the famous comic novel, not just because we were going to bumble (or 'bummel' as J would put it) around in a vagon much as they did on a lodka, but also because we knew that this particular novel was translated into Russian because of its innocuous content, and well read during the Soviet period.

Therefore we were delighted, in our search through the underpass booths of Moscow for Soviet musicals and film versions of Bulgakov's novels, to happen upon, in the booth by Ploshchad Revolutsii, a Russian adaptation of the JKJ book which was also a musical. We were, however, a little disturbed when Andy switched on his TV that very evening and found the same film just happened to be playing. Unless they show it every night, freaky.

2. One of the analogies we'd been playing with since our arrival was the Morlock/Eloi dichotomy in Wells' Time Machine, not just to describe the underground/overground bumbling free aspect of our trip, but, as Wells intended, to replay the sharp division of industrialised society into mob and aristos, unter- and ubermensch, workers and bosses, that the Metro subverts and inverts with its buried palaces for the people.

Therefore I was a little astonished, on arriving at Sheremetevo Airport for the return flight, to wander into the DVD shop and find, not only was The Time Machine playing (unfortunately the Guy Pierce rather than the Rod Taylor version), but it was conveniently at that point in the movie when the Elois were raided by the Morlocks. Even more appropriately, I'd been the one having Morlock dreams. Freaky and deaky.

3. One of the recurrent fascinations of our trip was the story of Metro 2, the shadowy second system that served the Politburo and the KGB and, it was rumoured, was still in use and still being extended. I remember ten years ago being told a line ran from the Party bosses' dachas by Sparrow Hills, straight to the Kremlin. We'd grilled a few enthusiasts about this, scanned the fan site, and discovered there was a computer game called Metro 2.

Therefore we were delighted to discover through further 'research', that Metro 2 the game features a plot to assassinate Stalin which is supposed to take place around... where else but where we had ended up staying, quite by chance of course: Ismailovo. Freaky, deaky and their younger brother, Zekey.