Chance Meetings

Last Monday, October 2nd, I had some shopping to do and cycled down to Oxford Street. Trundling off, I paused to look at the sky, thinking that the dark clouds were few and far between and although it looked like it might rain, it would only be a shower. Didn't bother with a jacket. A little bit of rain didn't kill anybody. Five minutes from the house it started. I stopped and sheltered for five minutes or so. It looked like it was easing off. Off I went, down Abbey Road, home of the Zebra Crossing made famous by the Beatles, but it became even more torrential and so I sheltered in a bus stop.

Also taking refuge was a woman there with a young baby. She was a maternity nurse and that looks after newborns for a month, sometimes 3 months for families who don't really know how to look after infants. She gets them, baby and parents, into a routine. Teaches both. She was the kind of person that just looking at her would inspire confidence. She had such a gentle disposition, yet at the same time looked as thought she wouldn't mess about or take any nonsense. Although I had just met her I felt I would have left my baby in her care any time. She was probably in her 50s I think. Beautiful skin too, couldn't help noticing that. She had started out as a nanny, which she did for many years and then moved into maternity nursing. Hadn't any training but had been doing it for years.

We talked about how difficult it can be moving in with a family for a month at a time, 6 days a week, how some families are great and others very difficult. She was very professional, no names, but she did infer how some families can be a tad precious and get so worked up about their infant crying. She also talked about how mundane it can be, how boring, repeating the same old thing to parent and parent after parent.

I told her I never failed to be amazed at how feckless people can be about babies and how I am often astonished by their ignorance and ineptitude, usually in those who are wealthy and can employ nannies to care for their children. Goodness knows what would come to these children if, God forbid, their parents had to look after them. She talked about the current baby whose parents rush to his side, panic stricken, as soon as he starts to cry. People don't know that, yes, babies do cry and sometimes it is really okay to let them cry a little. I always say, as a rule of thumb, if a baby is well enough to protest, they are generally okay. Clapped out, lethargic, non-protesting babies? Now they scare me to death.

So after about 10 or 15 minutes, I realised that the rain wasn't going to stop in this lifetime so, when it eased a little, I left her sitting under the bus shelter with her charge and I went for it but by the time I got to Oxford Street it was torrential again. I took shelter underneath a shop awning. A young woman joined me and after a while I made a comment, and we got talking. She was from South Africa and had been here 5 years and had no intention of going back there. Loved London. We talked about the differences and why she loved it and why she didn't want to go back to SA. Mainly it revolved around freedom and security. I was interested in her job and how she had got into it and I talked a little about why I was interested and where I was in my life decision making just now. It was fun talking with her. Her mother had just been over here too for a couple of weeks and chatted to just about anybody who would talk to her. We laughed about how generally people in London don't do that, however, although they have a reputation for not talking, generally if you talk to them they talk back.

Right at the end of our conversation she mentioned her husband and said something I didn't quite catch. A few sentences later I asked her what she had said about her husband. Did you say your ex husband... no, she hadn't. It was her late husband and then she told me how he had just died 2 weeks before. It was such a sad story. He died suddenly in his fifties. She was only 29 and but the age gap hadn't meant a scrap. It did in the beginning she said but not later. She had a choice she said, either to go for it and risk happiness or to leave it and risk loosing it. She went for it and was never happier. She said she had 5 glorious years with him and they were so happy together. Plainly she was just devastated. The penny dropped. That's why her mother was over from SA and now she was alone again in this her adopted city. So there on Oxford Street I gave her, this total stranger, a big hug and she hugged back. There were tears in both our eyes.

She assured me she didn't normally talk to total strangers, nor did she cry in public or even tell anybody she was recently widowed. It just all came out. She cancelled the holiday she and her husband had booked before he died but she had booked another for February, to give herself something to look forward to, something to get her through the winter and she had just been to buy some kit so she could start going to the gym. She talked about how work had started to lean on her a little to go back to work and how I said not to let them, that she had to take this time, to cry and wail just as she wanted. When the time was right she could go back. I gave her my email, not because I want to rescue her from her grief but just in case she ever wanted a cup of coffee or a chat or help sorting her husband's effects, as sometimes it is good to do that with somebody with no emotional attachment. I told her even if she never emailed me, that was fine but at least she had the contact to do with as she pleased. And then off we went, into the rain of Oxford Street. She just struck me as having so much guts... and it was just the chance comment she made that made everything tumble out. I don't think I will see her again but my thoughts are with her.

In the beginning...

One day while taking shelter from the rain in London's Oxford Street, I started to chat to somebody also taking refuge. Just a simple encounter but after I felt enriched and profoundly moved by her story. It wasn't planned. It wasn't sought, nor manipulated. It just happened. I realised that in my life I have so many of these encounters. Some people seem entirely sane and rational. Some appear to have different struggles and different challenges. Although I call these ones the crazies, it is done with affection. All, the crazies and the rational have done me the honour of sharing a few moments of their lives with me. So, just after a few of these encounters in a row I thought would like to record these gems.

Least, that was the thought, the catalyst for this Blog but then I thought I would just expand it to write about things, just things, as they occur and as the moment takes me and inspires me to write or not. Any stories from the crazies and others can get written about as and when they occur, naturally along the way. I thought I'd just see where this takes me.