Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.

MEETINGS WITH STRANGERS

Some encounters stand out more than others.

I am reflecting on the time my wife and I spent some weeks in the UK on long service leave in June and July 1996. People I saw and talked with.

. A man on the Yorkshire moors releasing pigeons to fly home.

. A Shearer with a portable shearing plant, shearing long wooled sheep at John-O-Groats.

. A street cleaner working in the early hours of the morning to cleanse a very dirty main thoroughfare in Dublin.

. A second Shearer on the Isle-of-Skye was using hand-held blades to remove the fleece. He was in the corner of the paddock dragging each cooled animal onto a tarpaulin and relieving it of its fleece. The sheep were being held in a tight group by a sheepdog awaiting their turn.

Conversations with these strangers – and many others – during our time in the Mother country were most interesting.