Waiting for the bus to take me back home from the beach yesterday, I noted a young man limping horribly towards the bus stop – clearly in a lot of pain. The funny part was he had found a stick somewhere in the abundant bush land to use as a walking support.

However, the wooden stick was far too short to be of any possible use, given that he was a slender and rather tall bloke and the impromptu walking cane was about 45cm long at best. I reassured him the bus would be there in about ten minutes, after which he started to relax and chat.

He’d been trying to walk from Manly to Bondi but an injury had now made it impossible to carry on. What I liked about this was that he didn’t have any annoyingly colourful sports gear on. Just a bloke trying to do a bit of a full-on walk.

We ended up having a great instant rapport, chatting about a host of topics such as his plans for his first trip to Europe, his Italian/Indonesian background, his keen interest in philosophy and his earnest misgivings about his generation’s obsession with smartphones and “the lack of any real contact.”

Nice relaxed end to a relaxing day.