Gentle Reader, for this first day of my 366 (leap year!) day challenge to Write Every Day and Blog Every Day, I thought I’d write about the dream I had last night, about Albert, a London gentleman I met in 2011.
But first, about these Writing Prompts.
I bought a book entitled 500 Writing Prompts and after perusal, decided I’m not entirely crazy about the prompts it has. So I will solicit prompts from you, Gentle Readers, and come up with my own. Perhaps find a website with prompts as well, but the book? Back to Barnes and Noble it goes.
Now, to Albert.
In 2011, I went to the UK for a research trip, and ended back in London after beginning in London (swinging round to Manchester and Paisley, Scotland along the way). I went to have fish and chips one night, and sat at my lonely little table for one with my Amazon Kindle.
“Is that one of them Amazonian things?” the gentleman at the next table asked.
“It is,” I said, “A Kindle.” And thus began one of the loveliest conversations I’ve ever had with a stranger. Albert grew up in London, you see, and spent his formative years during and after the Blitz. He told me amazing stories, about mates stealing pineapples–“We had never seen a pineapple before,” he said–and finding a sweets shop almost entirely standing, except for the walls–“the candy had fused together from the heat,” he said.
He was kind to a strange American and her Kindle, and I will never forget his kindness, nor his stories.
Any particular nice stranger encounters you’ve had, Friends?
The Postmodern Bluestocking 