It's a small world after all...

(Back Blip)

With his huge telephoto lens, Longshadow finally spotted an elusive mallard in the distance. 

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Today was another travel day.  Glasgow, Scotland, to Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds, England.

Sad to have to say goodbye to my family.  Each stay on our trip is way too short.

My dad took us to the local train station in the morning.  From there we caught the train to Glasgow Central, then another from there to Birmingham New St and from there, one more to Cheltenham Spa, where we were met by Aliscotia and Longshadow (from door to door about seven hours). 

Aliscotia and I have been really close friends for… oh my, about 35 years… until you think about these things, you are (or at least, I am) not aware of how much time has passed.  It’s always so wonderful to see them both so we’re excited to be staying with them for a few days!

When we got to their house, we just dropped our bags and headed out for a quick walk so that we could see Bourton (one of the most picturesque villages in England) before it got dark.  Since we’re all into photography, when we’re together, we tend to look like a walking advertisement for Nikon!  We all snapped a few shots of the river, ducks and historic buildings.  The rest of the evening was spent eating and catching up. Bliss.

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Back to our interesting  train journey, which Leejohnaire has blipped about already but also said I’d elaborate on, so… We got on the train at Glasgow Central and found our reserved seats sitting opposite an older gentleman who was already there.  We started chatting to him about a loudly vociferous lad further up the carriage.  As the journey progressed, so did our conversation.  We discovered he’d just finished having chemo two days ago, so he and L compared notes (thankfully, both were clearly getting excellent care in their respective cities/countries).  When he found out we lived near Houston, he told us about the holidays he’d had there, visiting his cousin and a Scottish friend who’d moved there too.  As we narrowed it down further, it turned out that not only does his cousin live in the same suburb as we do (Tomball) but his cousin’s wife used to work with L at Compaq/HP!  Flushed with that coincidence, and some quick exchanges of messages with her on LinkedIn, the man (who we now knew was called Jack) then turned to me and asked whereabouts in Glasgow I’d grown up.  It turned out he now lives about three miles from there.  He was trying to think of people he knew in my part of town.  Understanding the tiny odds of us knowing the same people, he said, “I’ll just throw a name out there.”   I was thinking to myself that this was going to be awkward. At best, it might be a name I vaguely recognized but won’t remember anything about, so I braced myself.  He then said my dad’s name!  That was definitely one of the more surreal moments in my life.  Jack had been one of the drivers my dad used to talk to me about when they both volunteered at the local branch of Age Concern (a charity that looks after the elderly).   My dad still does some work for them and Jack was hoping to get back to driving for them now that his cancer treatment is over, so they’ll no doubt have a good laugh about this when they meet up there in the future.  I think we were all so freaked out by those coincidences that we didn’t dare try to think of any more possible connections after that!