I arranged to meet a person today for a particular, administrative purpose. But then we started to chat. We ranged widely across tales of generations of our families and found the most unexpected coincidences. We both have mixed relationship parentage, each with one parent descended from linen barons and one from the other side of the tracks. We each had a grandparent who worked on the railway in Co Antrim and enjoyed amazing international free rail travel. We both have connections with Poitiers. We both have a herd of elephants among our inherited and collected bric a brac. We both have strands of family history of bean counting and teaching. One of us was good at exams and had an easy passage in academic achievement and worked for the government in a very traditional career, one of us is full of brains, couldn't do exams but instead has real entrepreneurial spirit and works for themselves. Both of us still pursue our dream.
Our administrative purpose was about a deeply depressing issue, and our meeting could have been short and indeed deeply depressing. However, meeting up with a life force like Anne, who believes in self-disclosure if you expect to get to know the other person, resulted in hours of happy, life affirming chat and I am very, very grateful.
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