Hard on the heels of Bill MacCreadie who told us last week of the bizarre coincidence which found him sitting at the next table to the lorry driver who, 20 years ago, had dug Bill and his family out of a snowdrift on a remote Highland pass, disappearing as soon as the job was done, David Howard rang us about his strange reunion...

"I used to play rugby each weekend for a team called Dorchester. When we came back from an away match I used to get back into Dorchester about 10 or 11 at night and then had to find my way usually by hitch-hiking 15 miles across the downs to Bridport." Usually this was no problem for David, but on this particular occasion it was snowing hard. David set off, hoping to be picked up, but after two miles, he was very, very, cold and still without a lift.

"Then I came to an official building on the Dorchester to Bridport road which I knew well and was a BBC relay station, full of humming bits of machinery." Lights were on in the building, and bravely defying offical BBC notices of Private and Do Not Enter, David knocked on the door. "A youngish man answered and said,'You look frozen! You'd better come in.' I asked if there was somewhere I could lie down until the morning, and then get a milk lorry. He said, "I'm not supposed to do this, but you can lie down under that machine in the hall. It makes a clicking noise, but you might get some sleep. I'll have to wake you early, because my manager arrives at 6.30 and I'm not supposed to let anyone in.' I lay on the cold stone floor and went fast asleep, until he woke me and told me it was time for me to go."

Eighteen years later, in a different hemisphere, and David was having dinner with a friend in a hotel in Lusaka in Zambia, with a Chief Education Officer and his friend who was running Zambia Radio. The talk turned to football and the enthusiastic youngsters who'd walk for miles from their villages to join the local team. The man from Zambia Radio said, "This will show you just how crazy people get; about 20 years ago, when I was in Dorset, one night at about midnight, an absolutely frozen guy knocked on the door. He'd been playing rugby somewhere and was blue with the cold, and asked if he could sleep on the floor because he was so tired..." David ended his sentence for him, "... and at six o'clock you asked him to go." The man looked at him in amazement, "Yes! But how did you know?"