brief encounters

 
 

[English Walk, Regent's Park]

Brief encounters are the stuff of short stories. They are one of the things that make life so intriguing, so vastly interesting, so full of possibilities. They can and do happen to anyone. They may offer a glimpse into someone else's life, or turn out to be life-changing or simply highly memorable.

I've had quite a few brief encounters and have often wished I could write short stories, so that I could turn them into beautifully crafted narratives or take them to interesting conclusions, in the way that  Mollie Panter-Downes or Elizabeth Taylor or Helen Simpson (my favourite C20 short story writers) might.

 

Trains and cafés are perfect places for brief encounters (as Noel Coward and David Lean well knew). On Friday, en route to Primrose Hill I took a detour through Regent's Park to look at the roses in Queen Mary's Gardens. On my way, I discovered the amazing English Walk which is a funny mix of old-fashioned, costly and labour-intensive carpet bedding schemes, and borders filled with very contemporary-style, modish perennials dotted with colourful annuals - all marvellous and absolutely free.

 

The park was cold and empty, and the famous deckchairs looked very forlorn. No brief encounters happening here.

 

[gate to QM Gardens]

Then the heavens opened. Admittedly, the roses looked beautiful in the dramatic light,

 

and the park was filled with the fragrance of thousands and thousands of roses, intensified by the rain.

 

So I took cover in the café and met a very interesting woman from Vancouver and we talked until the rain abated and I could go home (all plans of going further were abandoned). She told me about a very different way of life and shared so much in a short time, and it was a pleasure to have met her.

It reminded me of the time I went into the original Patisserie Valerie in Soho (long before it became part of a chain) and I shared a table with a delightful woman who turned out to be Sarah Garland, whose books I was then reading to Tom, Alice and Phoebe.

And of the time when I was student travelling home by train in one of those separate compartments with just one fellow passenger, a young man, who kept smiling at me. After a couple of hours of smiling, he wrote a note and handed it to me. 'I love you. Will you marry me?' Nerves, not the promise of an adventure, got the better of me and I changed compartments.

But I still like cafés, trains, and brief encounters. And short stories.