I certainly got the surprise of my life while I was reading my friend Chris Herring's blog last week.
For many years Chris was a friend and colleague of mine in Brussels. When he recently moved to Shanghai, it was therefore only natural that I should look him up on the internet to see how he's settling in. Little did I suspect that by doing so, I would inadvertently come face to face with my very own double.
Having never seriously suspected that elsewhere on the planet, there might actually be some poor sod who's unlucky enough to be almost the exact spitting image of me, I was amazed to discover that Chris recently saw such a specimen repairing a bicycle on mainland China.
All I can say is thank God I never exchanged bodily fluids with a local lady (or indeed man!) while visiting Flinty and Claire in the Land of the Dragon all those years ago; otherwise I'd have genuinely believed that I was now casting my eyes upon my very own illegitimate sprog.
The likeness is truly uncanny. When I placed this picture on my Facebook page, it immediately began a heated discussion about the poor fellow's proportions, with one comment even describing him as a homunculus. As I said, the physical likeness is truly uncanny!
