It's always weird to bump into someone you know and haven't seen for years, but to do it in a different hemisphere from where either of you thought the other was is more than a little disconcerting...
Linda and I run into each other in the strangest places. Last time we randomly turned up at The Ten Bells on Shoreditch High Street at the same time, I had thought she was in Mexico (The Ten Bells is famed for being the "Jack the ripper pub"). The time before that we walked past each other at a music festival on Hackney Marshes, I thought she was back in Sweden, she thought I was living out in the sticks - I was!
Emily & I had been at the night noodle markets, which are part of Good Food Month in Sydney. We walked to the bus stop and Linda was getting the same bus as us home and currently lives round the corner from us. I was so stunned I couldn't think of anything to say, at all. At moments like this you really want to come accross well as how you are at that time may be the way that you are remembered until you meet them again. Given that the intervals that Linda and I meet are doubling every time - that could be four years! This made me more awkward than I would like and particularly as I was still in work clothing and in dire need of a haircut, she was dressed in civvies having been planting trees all day. Dammit I want to be a hippy and go and plant trees all day, and here I am working for AMP!
The slightly awkward feeling lasted for the most of the bus ride home but I have put it down to being tired and have written it off as surprise. I still made Em give me a haircut when we got home (given that she gets upset with me if I let anyone else cut it this isn't as extreme as it sounds). It was great to see Linda again and I hope that I see her again before she goes back to Sweden to train as a nurse but on our current form it'll be quite a while before I see her again.
