It was just as if the two things were linked even though they couldn't possibly have been. Was it some kind of good karma? They were both very unremarkable in the grand scheme but, in my quiet world, these two insignificant incidents side by side felt like a brief flash of magic.
It was Monday morning, I had found myself inadvertently chatting with a young homeless man - this is not a very common sight on the streets of my nearest town so it was a bit of an unusual situation for me. But I had ten minutes to wait on a busy pavement and he was sat next to where I stood - with his folded pop-up tent by his side, a can of coke and a gentle, kind-eyed, albeit rather haunted, smile. Anyway, Gareth (as he introduced himself) and I talked awhile. And it was really good. I hope too that it helped him feel... well, fully human: not invisible. I don't mean that condescendingly; I just can't imagine how awful it must be to end up in his predicament. He never asked me for it but I gave him a little gift when I left him - though somehow that didn't seem to be the most important part, what mattered was our prior interaction. Anyway, that was that, we said goodbye and I'll probably never see him again.
Twenty minutes later I was a few miles away, walking into Tesco as a random woman was coming out and, you know what it's like - no-one takes any notice of eachother normally, too preoccupied. We're invisible in a different way! But she looked at me and then stopped especially to say something unexpectedly flattering, a lovely compliment, which she followed up with an even bigger one. Thank you dear lady! This stranger taking the trouble to tell me something so nice and out of the blue made day, it was such a boost. In fact, small though they are, both that morning's moments have lingered on in my mind since.
I just can't help this feeling that they were, in some intangible way, connected...
Well, we all shine on...
