Conversation

So I went to the Arts Centre today to have my lunch, and as I sat on one end of a capacious but mostly unoccupied couch a man approached.

"Do you mind if I sit on the other end?"

So he sat down, pulled out a monstrous ring-bound A4 manuscript and began at once to verbalise.

"You have to walk so much in England, I can't believe it!"

He flung his jumper down , revealing the other one he was wearing underneath it.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Greece," he replied, "Greece, Athens. It is beautiful there, beautiful!"

I tell him I have never been.

"Oh, but you must, it's beautiful! At least once. When you go there you will want to go again."

He budged up a bit as his mother sat down next to him. A most random dialogue proceeded.

We talked about my degree, my subject and year of study, where I lived, his degree of study and where he lived. We talked about the huge manuscript he was consulting, his own thesis on Grecian politics and economics (as I remember roughly) and how it took him three and a half years to research it having to painstakingly arrange a series of personal interviews because it was not well documented. We talked about the weather, about how it was so much colder here than in Greece and the English were deluded to believe it was already hot. He asked about good restaurants. We talked about how the University had not changed much since he did his first degree here in 1998. Some nights in the Union now were the same as then, some are now different. We talked about how I love literature in spite of being a scientist, and how he can write about politics excellently but can't bear to read any of it because he is just so fed up after writing the thesis. We talked about certain futures and uncertain futures, and how both of us didn't know where we were going, but both knew it would be fine. His mother asked me a few of the same questions which he reiterated. When he fetched her a cappuccino and wandered off, she and I talked about how cappuccinos in the Arts Centre were not too good, and she laughed heartily about her over-sized spoon, declaring "This is only good for soup!!"

And then I left because I had to go to a lecture.

Nobody is nearly as open and honestly interested and nice to people around here, and indeed I think, in many parts of the world. The only person I know who can just do that so freely with people is my dad. I have been practising being able to converse with people in this manner, and I am indeed able to start many a random conversation with people on my course, but I can't do it completely freely anywhere with anyone yet.

I enjoyed my spontaneous conversation with these people. I think more of life's encounters should be like this. It's one way how ideas and friendships and futures are carved, and none of them can ever be completely inconsequential.