Travelling Companions.

On long train journeys, where I drink tea, read good books, watch the countryside fly by, I also talk to strangers.

On a train to London, I met another Rebecca, a nursing student from Dundee, confirming her shifts via text en route and visiting her older brother. I was visiting my brother in London too, and so we talked and exchanged mobile numbers. Same-name people who meet on a long journey.

A few months later, I met Lucy, a dentistry student studying in Sheffield and working as an events organiser, on this occasion at a stately home. Again, we laughed and talked- she was going to Paris- after finishing work that day. And so complete strangers, we exchanged numbers and she texted me when she made it to France. Later texts at Christmas went back and forth.

Yesterday I met Gordon. A man in his 70s who recently lost his wife to breast cancer. He said "life is hard".
"You work all your life and save up money but it does not mean anything."
So I asked questions and listened. He told me about his son, his career in the Nuclear Physics department at Oxford University. his too-big four bedroom house, how his wife did all the cooking and he did the cleaning, going on holiday on his own. But he had friends through church and good neighbours- but I will pray for him for he is right. Life is hard.

After Gordon, I met Izzy. Half Italian and from the Isle of White, and studying French and Spanish at Oxford. Capacious leather hand bag and obvious huge appetite to learn and study. Kindles. You can't turn pages. And Trinity College library probably has not digitalised all it's archives to fit on a kindle. Such encounters light up the sky.

I love train journeys.