Three Minutes, One Word and a Stranger
There are days when something happens at exactly the moment you seem to need it.
During our recent staycation at the Royal Lancaster London, we took a walk through Hyde Park and found ourselves at the Italian Gardens.
It was the first time I had been back there since Darcy passed.
The Italian Gardens hold so many memories for me. We had walked there together many times, and being back brought that familiar mixture of happiness and sadness. I was feeling a little melancholy, remembering another time and another little dog walking beside me.
And then I noticed a man sitting on a park bench.
Beside him was a typewriter and a sign:
THREE MINUTE POEM
Of course, I was intrigued.
I went over and asked him how it worked.
He explained that I simply had to give him a word, a thought, or something that was on my mind, and he would write a poem for me in three minutes.
So I told him about Darcy.
I told him that this was the first time I had returned to the Italian Gardens since she had died, and that being there had brought back so many memories.
And with that, he began to type.
There is something wonderfully nostalgic about the sound of a typewriter — the clacking of the keys, the little pauses between thoughts, the knowledge that the words appearing on the page cannot simply be deleted and rewritten.
I stood there and waited.
Three minutes later, he pulled the paper from the typewriter.
And then he read the poem to me.
A poem about Darcy, about memory, about returning.
Written by a complete stranger who, only minutes earlier, knew nothing about either of us.
It brought a tear to my eye.
His name is Typing for Strangers, and I later discovered that this is what he does — creating spontaneous, personalised poems for people, as well as appearing at events and private functions.
And the loveliest part was that he wasn’t usually sitting there in the Italian Gardens.
He just happened to be there that afternoon because he had a job later that evening at a hotel opening.
Had we walked through the gardens an hour earlier or later, perhaps our paths would never have crossed.
But the story became even more extraordinary the following day.
I was back at the Italian Gardens when I bumped into my friend Zeina. I told her about the man with the typewriter and the poem he had written about Darcy.
Her reaction stopped me in my tracks.
She had been trying to find him.
Of all the people I could have bumped into, in all the places in London, there we were — at the very same spot where I had encountered him the day before.
Coincidence?
Probably.
But sometimes life gives us these curious little moments when people, places and memories seem to intersect at exactly the right time.
I had gone back to the Italian Gardens thinking about someone I had lost.
Instead, I came away with a new memory.
And a three-minute poem about Darcy that I will keep forever. ❤️
