Unlikely friends | the people we meet

A few extra days off over the Easter long weekend saw me take a solo trip to Bath on Good Friday, to catch up with a dear friend of nearly sixteen years and enjoy the sunshine that we have been severely lacking these past few months. The story I would like to share actually has nothing to do with Bath, and may not have happened, had it not been for one of my connecting trains being cancelled due to urgent rail works on the line. I only discovered this as my husband was dropping me off at the station for my first leg, and my “she’ll be right” response was perhaps a bit hasty. I had no idea what had been cancelled, but boarded the train none the less, and spent the forty minute duration of the trip stressing my head off trying to figure out how to get from a to b. For a minute I had convinced myself that I may not make it to Bath for a one day return trip, and I was certainly not planning on dishing out a few hundred pound for a room overnight, on a bank holiday or any other day. My arrival to Oxford station and a discussion with a steward (who had the same conversation a million times over already that morning) revealed that a replacement bus had been arranged for that leg of the journey and my timetable for the day would only be shifted back by a matter of thirty or so minutes. Needless to say, I made it to my destination unscathed and had a fantastic day, but such context is needed to understand the following story. On reflection, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling like a nineties movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan – a dear little encounter that warmed my heart then and now, and I hope to have many more like it.

My trip home from Bath was mostly uneventful, and less stressful as I was simply doing the reverse of what I did earlier in the day. I ran out of the train station to catch my replacement bus back to Oxford before my final train leg home. Jacket and bag flapping, running towards the platform marshal’s crys of “bus for Oxford”, breaking a slight sweat over the fear of missing it. After such a topsy-turvy day on public transport I was not about to have to wait another sixty odd minutes for the next bus, and miss my final train home. I ascended the coach stairs and stared down the aisle to a sea of faces, some looking at me and others not. One gentleman slid over in his seat to make space. A little breathless and stressed from the anxiety of not missing the bus, I politely asked, “do you mind if I sit here”. My fellow passenger nodded with a slight grin and gestured beside him “go ahead, please do”. This is how I found a short lived friendship with a dear man many years my senior. For the sake of the story, we shall refer to him from here on in as D. I don’t know if it was his resemblance to my grandfather that made us get along so well, but get along we did, like a house on fire.

Our bus moved off, and D glanced at me and whispered with a giggle, “that was a very English thing to say”, in reference to my perhaps unusual request to sit next to him, in a situation where I would have otherwise had to stand given the lack of available seats. I was delighted to hear that I was blending in well with the locals, as I told him the funny thing was, that I wasn’t even English. My parents must have raised me well. His response was that well I suppose they also raised you to be wary of old men with grey hair, as everyone else had passed him by on boarding the bus. I suppose I would have too, if it were not for the high demand for seats.

Our conversation evolved from there, with our initial exchange having sufficiently broken the ice. D, a widower and avid traveller, lives alone in a studio flat in London, which I apparently accurately described as a “manageable” situation for a man of his vintage. He loves trains, and is heading to Cornwall later this month with a lady friend for 2 months. She lives in Costa Rica and is learning Spanish as a second language. He didn’t see the point of that given her age, which perhaps was slightly unfair. A third trip to India is also on the cards for him this year – he visits his meditation guru for a few weeks as the time. He will be visiting during the hotter months, and I was able to give him some woman’s advice on his wardrobe. Apparently he doesn’t cope well with heat.

He enquired what it was I do, and upon learning what, asked me “do you figure then, that as long as people have teeth, you’ll have a job?”. I explained that even when people don’t have teeth, we are still kept busy making them fake teeth – excellent job security. D though this was hilarious and had a good chuckle for a few minutes. We covered a lot in our short bus ride between train stations, and I left our little conversation with a new movie recommendation, a friend and a smile on my face. It was only as we were leaving that I thought to ask his name and introduce myself. Upon arrival in Oxford, we wished each other good luck and went our separate ways – me in a rush to catch the last train leg home, and him to spend Easter with his family.

If the opportunity arises, speak to someone you don’t know, people want to connect, especially the older generations who have perhaps been a bit forgotten by mine. In this case I was luckily not lured into abduction, and it made my day and someone else’s a lot better. I saw two friends that day, one old and one new – although will I ever see one of them again, that I do not know.