Meeting Sue On Saturday the 3rd June.

Its quite funny encountering people, when you have only read their words and in many ways we are told to avoid strangers'¦I guess we are all strangers at the beginning.

I managed to meet Sue (dreamer from EditRed) who was midway through her tour of Britain and I wondered to myself what she looked like and if she would recognise me. The day got off to a sunny start and I walked aimlessly around London Victoria, where swarms of pigeons and walking suits were my company. After graciously inhaling urban fog and sitting on the tarred blue seats of the Victoria Line train I managed to find myself a curt little spot in a park in Leicester Square. I usually am in the habit of being early for any meeting and I guess that stems from the time when my parents were panicking when they only had 10 minutes in which to pack for a cruise around the Mediterranean'¦I thought to myself 'No way would I ever be late for stuff'.

Sue had called me and it was something along the lines of that her door was stuck, because the wood was swelling under the Summer heat. I thought it was hilarious: two Canadians locked outside of their house, even though they had a supposedly functioning key. After numerous chats with her during the last three days I had the impression that wherever these 2 women went, quirky phenomenon surely followed. I can recall an incident where Sue casually told me that her train had collided into a herd of deer and that they were resigned to talking to strangers on the train. Three hours into the fiasco and she seemed to be chatting to the other commuters and generally getting on like a house on fire.

Sorry about the digression'¦ Well I lost a wager in one of my chatting sessions and as a penance, I had to order up a round of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. I secretly preferred Hagen Daas. Maybe the weird Swedish name had connotations of superior ice cream that has been sourced from an escoteric location, but then again it was probably made in London along in the same factory as Whippees' 99p vanilla cream cones! The dairy goodness of my dessert would have tasted so much better if half the bloody thing didn't dribble on my dark blue jeans (white on blue trousers- a flattering combination). I felt a kind of pervasive stickiness around my knees and it was the sugar from my strawberry cone caramelising in the sun.

After much talking, past the formalities of where do you live and what do you write about, we walked into the largest bookshop along Piccadilly. Sue wanted to read up on a book by this bloke called Orson Scott Card (never heard of him with looks of surprise from all of you) and I wanted to bolt into the toilets to clean the remnants of creamy mess on my jeans- don't tell her that!

More to follow

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