Part 3
Until December 1st. I was at Charing Cross Station, heading back down the coast to Battle. I was sitting by myself in one of the old slam-door carriages, in a first class compartment. A few minutes before the train departed someone opened the door and stepped in. I was facing south in the window seat. The man who stepped in sat down on the aisle seat, facing north. We had no conversation.
No one else entered the compartment. By the time we got to London Bridge I had the sense that the man was staring at me. I looked up from my paper and the man said with a mixture of apprehension and incredulity �Do you remember me?�
I so often feel uncomfortable with questions such as these. I speak to large groups quite often and there seems to be this phenomena of people thinking because they have seen you whilst they were in a group, surely you must have seen them. I immediately apologised, saying �I�m really sorry. I think my brain is failing me today. Could you remind me where we met?�
He told me that he was the man who had shared a taxi with me from Toronto Airport to a hotel. And he pulled out of his wallet to show me a folded piece of paper. On it he had written something I had said during our ride. He said it was important to him to keep it.
To me, what makes the scenario even more unusual is that he was not on the same flight I was on. He had arrived on an Air Canada flight, directly from Heathrow. He was to transit in Toronto, then continue on to somewhere in the Northwest part of the States.
He left the train a few minutes later at Seven Oaks. I�ve never seen him since.
Fr Bill