Message in a Bottle

I'm not quite buying this story but if it isn't a hoax it's quite a coincidence.

From The Sun (UK)...

Mandy English was just 13 when she hurled the note requesting a penpal into the sea during a 1979 school trip to Scotland. Two years later Richard, then just six, spotted the glass bottle on the beach and sent a reply by postcard. Mandy never wrote back because of the age difference.

But while sorting through keepsakes last week, she found the 1981 card and realised its schoolboy sender had the same name as Richard, her boyfriend since last June. She asked Richard, now 36, if he remembered the message in the bottle - and it suddenly dawned on them that they had "met" before.

"It's crazy that it was Richard who wrote to me. It's not like we've lived all our lives near each other. We grew up hundreds of miles apart." He moved to Hull, East Yorks, in 2003 and by pure chance met Mandy with neither aware of their '80s childhood encounter.

"We definitely think fate brought us together. The most amazing thing is that in 1981 I signed off 'Love Richard' - and, now she's my girlfriend, I really do love her."