Map safely home

I got into trouble at home recently for making a new friend on a train. She wanted to come and see us before she returned to Africa and it wasn't very convenient. I remember snapping petutantly "I have picked up hundreds of people on trains and this is the only one who has wanted to visit me!" - as some sort of explanation why they should be more considerate. But it is true. Travelling of any sort makes it easy to make best friends, exchanging emails and mobiles and vowing eternal contact, but those that follow through are rare. I, too, have often found soggy scraps of paper years later with half a phone number, jolting guilty recollections that I was going to send them some life enhancing piece of information....



So how refreshingly wonderful when people do turn back up in our lives, eg Sophia from the coach via Brussels delayed by Channel Tunnel iced-up trains and snow warnings and a young, very principled Danish Sufi called Robert who had my map!



Robert and I had had a brief intense conversation about policing and non-violence which had helped both of us progress our thinking and our resolve. We met again on the last night of the Summit outside the Bella Centre yelling ourselves hoarse with Avaaz - a motley band described by Ed Milliband as "young people who are going to make a difference" which felt nice (well, - and me). From our previous conversation Robert had decided to make a present to me of a commentary of the Bhagavad Gita by Gandhi, which he says is the best version he has come across. I was bowled over by this kindness and delighted as our son has been showing interest in finding out more about Hare Krishnas. We screamed some more chants and met a representative from the Bolivian delegacy and then about 3 am we wombled 'home', having almost certainly been the sole reason the official Summit failed to agree on anything significant. It turned out, not altogether surprisingly, that nobody was at home when we got there and it was locked. The previous night we had been allowed to sleep there but this time they had put up signs that they were shutting at midnight. However what had not been clear was whether people were staying over or not - something I had decided to wait to discover for certain till 3.30 am on a bitterly cold night!

So that meant going properly home - thankfully not quite all the way back to the UK - but out towards the edge of Copenhagen and with only a fairly vague idea of how the night transport would meet our needs. That is why my wonderful map suddenly leapt back into action - showing us most of the way back out by subway. thankfully those trains ran all the way through the night, with only a 20 or so minute walk back from the station.

Robert had needed to show the station staff my rag-eared map to find the correct route. We then dropped down to the platform to find a large group of young people arguing with one provocative older man who was very drunk and kept insulting them. They were fighting a little then withdrawing and then, after more insults, it would start up again. With his strong nonviolent beliefs behind him, Robert courageously tried to keep them apart and having failed to do so for long, ran off to get some help. He arrived back just in time to emulate Gwenneth Paltrow in that fate deciding moment in Sliding Doors on the London Underground!

It must have been past 4 am when we emerged from the station very cold and well ready to fall asleep, so it wasn't surprsing that neither of us remembered Robert still had my beloved map. It was some weeks later that the lovely email arrived asking whether, in the light of the complex hieroglyphics in various handwriting on the back of it, I might like him to send it back?

What a great surprise.