In the dead of the night, don't go changing money for strangers

It’s all on the money

It was a chance to eavesdrop on a conversation that left me wondering about human psychology and social engineering along with the ease with which one can so easily fall for scams or deceit by reason of vanity overwhelming essential self-awareness.

It was at first three people engaged in bargaining activity over money, I could hear the young man and the lady resist every entreaty, that I immediately thought the other man was trying to pawn off some baubles or contraband just to get cash in hand.

The couple was not persuaded and as they separated and this in the witching hour, the man wheeled his bicycle which I had not noticed before towards a black cab where he addressed the driver, and I got a full context of what was going on.

Pounding for a dollar in hand

He had a $100 bill that he wanted to exchange for Pounds Sterling cash and for some reason, this might have been so urgent that he was not ready to wait for a Bureau de Change to open for that business transaction, or so it would seem before my mind took a ponder on the brief scenario that I had witnessed.

The exchange rate at today’s prices suggests $100 would be exchanged for something between £77 and £82 and that is not accounting for transaction costs, commissions, and other charges. I heard the man negotiating from £80 down to around £60.

I won’t know what an authentic $100 bill looks like and how to account for whether it is legal tender or a counterfeit, then a stranger approaches you in the middle of the night with what seems like a bargain, you none the wiser of where he got the bill, beguiled by whatever sob story he has to regale, and your better instincts see you parting with £70 for this unverified paper purporting to be the almighty dollar, you hoping at your convenience you can walk up to a teller at a Bureau de Change and get £80 or maybe £85 for it.

The vanity of half-knowledge

I hate to think of the number of people who have been suckered into the laundering of counterfeit notes and this is not to say the bill in question was counterfeit. Then, many of us might deign to think ourselves seasoned numismaticians (which might read like a neologism, but it is in the Oxford dictionary, I checked), take any bill and give it the handling, feel, sight, light, and smell test, convinced in our assured dilettantism that we have the Real McCoy, only to find at the end of the conversation with the teller, the next day, the teller goes out of sight for a few minutes and next you are being frog-marched by the local constabulary to the station to answer questions, you would never have convincing answers for.

And indeed, that is the quandary, you never got the name of the stranger, he offered no personal details apart from the soothing repartee that eased you gently out of the suspicious and cautionary into the trusting and persuaded, by a total stranger who could easily have been a ghoulish apparition from the city graveyard donning flesh and apparel for the night, just returning from whatever meetings the dead attend.

Always see strangers at night as strange

Yes, I am totally wary of strangers in the dead of the night, striking up conversation with them is something I so totally avoid even as I could be already backslapping strangers in the daytime after a few minutes of engagement. The most I would aver is to tell the time when asked and at a good arm’s length away.

I cannot say if the man did get to change his $100 bill before the breaking of the dawn, but what coursed through my mind was the need to have the presence of mind not to even countenance the thought of exchanging money for strangers, give them something for an urgency, if that is the case, but if you at all listen to the tales and get carried away in the moment that your vanity trammels reason and good sense to assume you are qualified to undertake that transaction, I’ll like to hear that your story is nothing like that worst case scenario I allowed my thoughts to drift to, such that my appreciation of the innate goodness of strangers and humanity is ever so slightly hit.

This could easily have been another Coronavirus streets of Manchester blog. It isn’t.

Being a present ear to listen

They come out of the blue

Sometimes, a stranger approaches you with a conversation about personal things that pertain to life and death. You never know what attracted you to them, but they lose all inhibitions and somehow find trust in the confidence of strangers.

The conversation starts easily as they attempt to gauge what kind of person you are. I have always tried to be courteous, respectful, and listening, with no idea if I can be helpful or not. The initial exchanges set the tone and they soon begin to unburden themselves.

Create new perspectives

One such encounter yesterday had a promising young man ready to take his own life because the relationship with his husband had broken down. It was a difficult issue, and rather than call the Samaritans he chose a random stranger he presumed looked mature and could be understanding of his dilemma.

You can be tempted to tell someone on the verge of suicide not to do it or assert the wrongness of that choice, but I have rarely been persuaded of that tack. Rather, I try to set new perspectives, drawing on my life stories of adversity and loss which at the time looked like there was no way out, the passage of time has made them into stories, told freely with many lessons of life learnt.

We live for a better story

In one last appeal to him, I said, we need to be around and living to get the opportunity to tell a better story beyond the betrayals, the tragedies, the pain, the adversity, the loss and much else. We must ask ourselves, how do we want our stories to end, if told by someone else? It was my hope that something out of our conversation might have gotten through to him to set him on a different course of action.

As it appears, I may never know what he ended up doing, I did not know his name, he was a young black gay man who was married for three years and the promiscuity of his husband had broken him to the extent that he wanted to end it all. When I checked this morning, our conversation had disappeared and with it, every trace of what might have been done in the heat of the moment or the cool of the night. In my heart of hearts, I hope he did not do anything harmful or terminal, I just wonder. May peace rule in his heart, his mind, and his life.

Thought Picnic: What a trip

Navigating to Jupiter

I arrived at my hotel this evening first being worried about something I might have misplaced with the hope of finding in a day or two but worse still was the 10 mile journey from Chester.

Usually, when I get a taxi, the driver has a good idea of where to go and only once before have I had to give the driver the post code because he needed the aid of the satellite navigator (SatNav) to get to our destination.

By now, I have a good idea of the route and if I keep aware of my surroundings, I can tell if we are somewhat off-course.

So, I told the driver where I was going and he asked for the post code which I had to call the hotel for, he keyed it into his SatNav as it is called for short and there began this amazing journey.

Strange turns in wild places

I noticed he took an unusual turn and then he turned back because he had missed a turn, he said he was following the shortest route according to the SatNav, I wasn’t impressed, as I said he could easily have taken the dual carriageway and turned off – I was about to grab the edge of my seat.

At a T-Junction he drove on the right to turn right and then before we knew it, we were on a dirt road, forded a stream, passed between a walled avenue with barely enough space the cab to pass through, bumpy and disconcerting, I could only wonder if I had gotten into a cab to some eerie place never to return to civilisation again.

This was not helped by the fact that it was dark, cold, remote, quiet and we were strangers, it was not one of situations where you would have shouted out to the driver, “Stop! Already, or I’ll call the police.”

Not short by half

Between the urge to panic with hysteric abandon and the adventure of navigating the Welsh back roads to oblivion and beyond, I kept my cool until the side road came out unto a road more familiar to me – I knew, that even in the broadest daylight, it wasn’t something I would have ventured.

Anyway, we arrived at the hotel and though the route might have been shorter according to the SatNav, it still came to the same price – it made no difference.

The driver came to open the door almost too aware of my unexpressed displeasure when he offered a reduction from the metered price, I was not about to take the generosity without an opinion.

Who are these people?

So, I told him, the last time I had a back road safari like that in the dark was probably too far gone in my memory to remember, my nerves frayed already as if I could do with a stiff drink, I stepped out took my bags into the hotel to be met with new faces everywhere – Hotel California?

No, Mother’s Day had more staff hired and it so happens that the regulars were away or off duty, it was not until my bags in storage were brought to my room before I saw a familiar face – if I learnt anything, you cannot live in a parallel universe, the difference will be too disconcerting to be healthy or peaceful.

I’ll rather stick to the usual route no matter how long it is and see the people I am most familiar with in a hotel that I have stayed in for the past 8 weeks.

Thought Picnic: In difficulty find simplicity

Stranger in strange places

Hostile environments are not places where he feels comfortable especially when  more the stranger dependent on the friendliness of others around you.

Though it might not appear as if they are being hostile, the subtlety between willingness and unwillingness, responsiveness and indifference, needing but hardly giving or even hearing but not listening makes him think he is an interloper upsetting some equilibrium or norm.

Now, he should not take these things to heart, his natural disposition is still to be calm, gentle, considerate, understanding and engaging, it is necessary that this helps keep perspective.

Dialling back the scales

The first few weeks can be difficult, finding his feet along with the privations of company, comfort and the essential nutrition that he should by means pay attention to, it is unsafe to do without, yet he beds most nights without supper where that critically helps the medicine go down but the means are scarce as other priorities matter.

He did seek help, some came but not really enough that the stealth of worry is just about to become a rather itchy pillowcase, no antihistamines for a bed so uncomfortable – beware of the baggage of lack.

It is a matter of days, he comforts himself things will soon turn and if he does not fret, it might well be good for the figure; an unspoken resolution has used the conspiracy of circumstance to deliver a trimmer Adonis – many hunger for that, out of hunger or in hunger.

In every difficulty, he tries to find some simplicity.

Thought Picnic: Chance encounters of relative closeness

A seat beside someone

What can one do about chance encounters that lead to interesting conversation with strangers than just engage?

I got on the train to Upminster this evening and it was quite busy that I wondered about whom to bump off the priority seats for the less able that includes a graphic of someone with a cane - I use a cane.

Just then, I saw a spare window seat that was difficult to get to because this lady had taken up the aisle seat and was busy sorting out her bags.

Birthdays and mothers

I asked and she allowed me to squeeze through leading me to suggest I needed to get the resolution of keeping trim the next year on an urgent list. She simply said I had nothing to worry about, I guess I have heard that as many times as a compliment as I have added the pounds too.

She was busy fidgeting with a birthday card to a daughter, I enquired if it was hers, but it was for her sister's 50th birthday, she had bought the card on behalf of her mother who I learnt was 83 and was too frail to go shopping but aware enough to ask for a card for her daughter.

Before we knew it

Then started a conversation that covered when I was born, where she lived, the cost of transport, my comparing that cost with transport fares in Amsterdam, her visit to Amsterdam over 12 years ago along with the good and naughty things she did, we could have known each other for years.

As the conversation drew to an end, I found that her sister shared the same birthday as mine - so uncanny - a stranger, the coincidence of seating, the spontaneity of conversation and a convergence of lives - none of which would have happened if we had not dared to talk rather than mind our own businesses ignoring each other after our somewhat stressful days.

Get engaged

In fact, I learnt much more about her as she did of me than I relay here but the moral of the story is the amazing goodness of life when we interact such the stranger is not so strange but just separated from you by a few degrees and when you find out and thinking about it afterwards, you have to agree that life is full of surprises if you are willing to be adventurous and be surprised too.

In parting, I sent my birthday wishes to my stranger friend's sister and I received good wishes too.