Strangers In The NIght

What a day Friday was. We woke to find that the UK had scored an own goal, with none of our political party leaders winning enough votes to get promoted to captain of the first team and help Great Britain escape relegation. We’re in a bigger mess than this metaphor.

Now we have rival Westminster squad players, who detest each other, pretending to be pals and practising moves on the training pitch while communicating through gritted teeth. A bit like what it must be like to play for Liverpool.

Coming home from work on Friday, the election was all people spoke about on the trains.

I wear fancy clothes about as frequently as Greece wins the lottery but I had a nice new suit on as I had been hosting an awards event. Fellow travellers must have confused my smart clothing with my intelligence, asking me for my opinions on politics on two or three occasions. As Cameron and Clegg now know, if the election did nothing else it made strangers talk to one another.

In my suit I looked professional, I guess, but if I expected anything from others I suppose it would have been someone assuming my mum had dressed me up for my First Communion and slipping a fiver in my pocket, or people mistaking me for a Jehovah’s Witness who’d lost his way (geographically, not spiritually). I wasn’t prepared for what really did happen.

As I got on the escalator at Waterloo, the lady in front turned around to me and said “I was looking at you on the Tube train and I thought ‘what a lovely suit’ so I’d just like to compliment you. You really carry it off.”

And yes, before you ask, she was fully sighted, was not wearing sunglasses or drooling, was unrelated to me and was not trying to be funny.

I’m telling you this not just because I am being more boastful than usual, nor am I revealing it because I only get compliments about every time Andrew Lloyd Webber wins Britain’s Next Top Model, but I’m sharing because I realised what was really great. A complete stranger had risked ridicule and rebuff just to be nice, without worrying that it would be misconstrued. Her very small act of kindness made me feel good all the way home.

So Friday was a good day to talk to strangers, whether in politics or in railway stations. But why is it that we rarely compliment people or talk to each other any more? Is it because we’re so used to emails and texts that we’ve forgotten how to speak? Without putting LOL or OMG or LMAO in every sentence or drawing a smiley face in the air, can we no longer communicate?

Some strangers should be avoided of course. Like the family who moved in around the corner from us and have a drummer in the family who practises non stop. Being American they only know one rhythm which is a cross between a marching band and My Sharona. Try listening to that all day long and you would compliment anyone with a shotgun and the neighbour’s address.

I do try complimenting my wife if she is looking extra specially pretty, but it apparently comes out wrong. I say “Wow, you’re dressed up” and then she looks cross and shouts, “Do you mean ‘You’re looking nice, darling?’”. To me they’re one and the same, but not to her.

Friday has made me resolve to work harder on complimenting people and being nice. I know the difference the lady at Waterloo station made to my day so it’s time now for me to approach strangers armed only with nice things to say.

If I’m arrested for harassment, your Honour, this week’s blog is my alibi.