Connections

Somewhere on the M4 between Oxford and Bristol, where L and I were venting about my ex- and her current workplace, O asked me from the back of the car whether I'd donated any poetry journals to Oxfam. Yes, I had. He handed me a business card of mine from 20 years ago, and told me he'd just found it in the journal he'd bought this morning. What are the chances?

But that's not all. O and I got to know each other over a recent post-theatre drink in Oxford when he told me that Education, Education, Education, by the Wardrobe Ensemble, was one of his favourite plays ever. I told him that one of the actors who set up the company a decade ago was a friend of my son, that I'd known her since they were both tiny and that I was a good friend of her mum. So when I saw that The Wardrobe Ensemble was performing their play, Riot, at Bristol Old Vic, I suggested we all went to see it together. O then told me that Riot was at the Edinburgh Fringe nine years ago where he'd desperately wanted to see it but couldn't because of clashes with his own show. He'd hung on to the flyer ever since. 

So not only were we going (with communal poetry journal) to see a play we all had strong but different reasons to see, we got a drink with the cast afterwards and stayed with the parents of one of the cast.

I spotted O picking up the current flyer and carefully stashing it.