Cleansed by conversation

A long walk and a long talk were all it took to reboot my brain.

Schadenfreude: noun — pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune. It is a German word and the last time I experienced it was, appropriately, in Germany. In Hamburg to be precise. But the pleasure was short-lived.

I was attending an international business meeting. Delegates had travelled from across Europe to attend what was scheduled to be a two-day event. But German airport security had other plans. They called a strike.

When news of the strike first broke, it seemed that it might impact only those travelling home to destinations such as the Denmark, Spain ad Sweden. With my British Airways ticket to London tucked safely in my pocket, I smiled wryly while others made hasty phone calls to airports, travel agents and to family. And then, in an instant, my schadenfreude vanished as my phone pinged to notify that it wasn’t just some flights that had been cancelled. It was ALL of them. I was stranded in Hamburg; my two-day trip extended to four days for reasons entirely beyond my control.

As it transpired, it was the best thing that could have happened.

I have known one of my fellow travellers for close on 20 years. We had worked in parallel for around 15 of those years, and…