Cultureshock

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Video transcript

When my kids are older, I want to tell them about The Kiss.

Years ago my gorgeous friend Lisa got on a packed train from London to Newcastle. Laden with bags, she plonked herself down next to a stranger on the only available seat on the train. This stranger was my husband-to-be. We hadn't met yet. He had been on the earlier train but had to get off because there were no available seats. So, here they were, two strangers on their journey back North. I had just met Lisa that very weekend at a fancy charity ball in Dublin. Calling at Peterborough and Grantham, she told him all about the night. Onwards to Doncaster, York and Darlington she described how she'd tried Guinness and danced the night away with an Irish girl she'd met. They decided to keep in touch.  Months later, I was working in Cardiff and had to come to London for a meeting. I wanted to catch up with Lisa so I phoned her. She said that she was meeting a friend - that guy she'd met on the train, who also happened to be in town but that I was welcome to come along. Well, a week later, he travelled from Newcastle to Cardiff to see me. We got into the back of a taxi. Then we turned to kiss. That's when it happened; the collision. I lurched forwards and out; deep in space, I fell. Captured; hung and spun; suspended beyond volition, from a thread, inside a picture frame on a gallery wall. Skin full and blistering red, our lips parted.  I turned away; towards him; unspun. Now, when I recall this scene; it's polished surface; like a painting, transcending the physical in a moment of sublime beauty, it reminds me that the life I inhabit now, is firmly rooted in the extraordinary too. Especially when I can say to my kids with great certainty "you just never know whose train will take you to where you want to go".