STRANGERS ARE JUST FRIENDS WAITING TO HAPPEN!

 

Nadia & me in Boston, USA Summer 09 - Best Mate/married to my cousin and miss her loads! Old friends are gold and new friends are silver! 

Isn't it funny how fate has a way of engineering a meeting? Take today for example.  If the lovely lady I met today at Sapori in Mill Hill, along with her equally lovely daughter, had not fallen out of a shoe shop doorway and broken her ankle two weeks ago we probably would never have got talking. She was being pushed in her wheel chair by her daughter and they came and sat next to me.  I enquired about her ankle and by the end of a really lovely forty-five minute chat, I had not only consumed my usual accompanied by a rather delicious slice of fig and walnut tart, but I had also made friends with a mother and daughter act of fabulous proportions.  Mum - an actress and fellow artist of many years and daughter a photographer and creative soul of like mindedness.  I have no doubt that at the time the accident occurred and she was sitting on the pavement in agony, the furthest thing from her mind was that this was all part of some grand plan to meet me!  Nor when she was sat in Barnet A & E and they told her there was nothing wrong only to discover at another hospital that she required surgery and a weeks stay as an in-patient this was fates way of organising a meeting of minds!  But fate sometimes needs to give people a little shove, sometimes a little too roughly, as in this instance, but a shove none-the-less.  So there we three were like friends of ages, taking in the heat of the beautiful sunny weather and discovering  similarities and enjoying each others company.  Friendships were made, details were swapped and future coffee outings agreed. Thank you fate - you have served us well.

It's always good to remember that not everyone you meet will be someone that will be there in your life long-term.  Sometimes people are there for a moment or time in your life so that you can be part of their journey and they yours.  Sometimes friendships you have had for years disappear as the need and dynamics of your lives change.  Whatever your friendships, old or new, life without them is lonely.  So smile at the person who smiles at you, have your 'girls night' or 'morning coffee', and don't be afraid to let go of a friendship that has run it's course - life is short.

My kids often say to me "why do you always talk to strangers?"  My answer "strangers are just friends waiting to happen!"