'Bout ten years ago I was did some work out in Eastern Europe, just when I was starting my PhD. I found myself, on a washed out day, walking along an empty piece of coast road on the shores of the black sea. It had rained heavily the night before and the sky had a battered, but bright, appearance. I had walked down a thin set of rickety wooden steps to the coast road, from a park where the autumn leaves had started to bury smashed and disfigured statues of Soviet heroes. As I walked along the road, stepping around potholes and random piles of gravel an old man walked past me, a fishing rod slung over his back. He smiled at me, stopped, and with a mouth which had almost no teeth spoke a few words. I shrugged, smiled, and said 'I'm sorry, I'm English, I did not understand'. He smiled again, stared at me for a few seconds and then carried on. I did to, my gaze flicking across the bay where waves splashed and flickered. Suddenly I heard a shout, and turning, I saw the old man waving at me.
'The storm, he has gone' He said, in English, and then 'now I can fish'. He waved his fishing rod over his head and I joined in his triumphant wave. He turned again, and we walked our separate ways, the distance between us growing as we walked our separate ways around the bay.

Theres something about that chance encounter which has stuck with me and I occasionally find myself thinking about it. I wonder if that old man is still alive, and I wonder if he ever remembers the strange out of place English man he met, miles from anywhere, one day in October. Perhaps not, and perhaps its only something in my head that makes such a random encounter so powerful but it seemed to bright, and vivid, at the time that I find it a comforting memory to return to.