Serendipity

After a fun day in London with MariainWales and her family – picnicking, dodging rain, chatting, singing (Maria and me, extracts from Britten's War Requiem at a workshop organised by the Proms), visiting the thought-provoking Disobedient Objects exhibition in the V&A – we sat in a pub discussing the state of the world while I waited for the right time to head off for my hourly train. I got so immersed I left four minutes later than I’d planned. So I just missed a tube train and had to wait 16 minutes for the next. Thus when I reached Paddington the Oxford train had just pulled out. I caught one 15 minutes later going half the way, to Reading, where it should have connected with another to Oxford, but engineering work delays put paid to that.

So it was that on Reading station I came across two young overseas students also trying to get back to Oxford but without my experience of train-hopping. And what a fascinating hour that led to, finding out about cutting edge research into nano-technology treatments for cancer, talking about studying in a language not your own and discussing different cultural approaches to parenting. Thereby becoming an honorary chaperone for one of them in case her father phoned.

That butterfly must have flapped its wings again.