We are all aboard a train. Some of those people riding on the same train as you become friends, some you really don’t like and you move seats to another carriage. Lots of other people are doing the same as you and eventually you find that you’ve settled in seats with a group of people that you get on with and you like spending time with.

But then there is another train and it is running on different tracks than yours. The only reason you know about this train is that you have a special timetable that lets you know about all the other trains running around on different tracks in the world. Sometimes the train will stop at a station and in some random moment in time, your train will stop at the same time as another one. On that train is a stranger, they get off and so do you, and you chat on the platform and get on well. Then it’s time for one or other train to leave, and you say your goodbyes and continue your journey, settling back in your familiar seat in your favourite carriage.

You ponder that you’ve found a new friend and wonder when and if you will ever see them again. You travel on and at some future point the train stops again at a different station. Once again your new friend is there and you greet and catch up with each other’s journeys. Alas, time is against you and you depart and once again and return to your seat. The carriage has new people in it now, but more sadly some of the people you really liked have gone. You hear that they moved to another carriage, and some got off the train and boarded a different one. This repeats and repeats…

The friendship with the stranger runs in slow motion, almost as if the train was travelling faster than the speed of light. When you step off you are presented with your friend as you left them a few minutes or hours ago, even though for you, time had travelled on months or years…

I seem to have many of these time travelling friends. I reconnected with some old ones recently. After years, well actually decades of travelling on different tracks, we managed to coincide our journeys to arrive at the same station. It was like we hadn’t left each other 30 years ago, we carried on where we left off, although all of us had been on our own very long journey in all that time.

But what of the friends you occasionally meet on the platform. To you, the friendship runs at the most frustratingly slow pace or maybe never progresses beyond the same cycle of exchanging pleasantries and catching up with each others journeys. You can’t help but think what could be if they were on your train or you were on theirs, and you also wonder if you should just stop consulting the timetable to see when their train will arrive in the station at the same time as yours..