This Ode has a checkered history. I shudder to think of the hours that have been spent on it!

Through many iterations it has arrived at the cheery version you may wish to try.

Under these circumstances I am pleased to assign the responsibility for this drivel to my good friend, John B. Moronigal.

However the version you read is but a partial record of what occurred.

Earlier versions include a reference to a sadness that imbued The Lady, who, she revealed, had longed in vain for children and now would never enjoy grandchildren.

But she did look bizarre, standing there on Hyndland Station, busy with homeward bound commuters on a Friday evening, a middle-class lady of mature years, expensively dressed, yet wearing Lemon-Yellow ballet shoes.

My own situation was also odd.

I was hefting a heavy two metre long rug, which, in emergency circumstances, I had been ‘requested’ to collect from the South of Glasgow, by my son Stuart.

This rug was destined for “Laggwood Cottage” on Arran, and at the very moment of my encounter with The Lady Awaiting, Stuart and a friend were hurtling up the M74 from Oxford, heading to our house in Bearsden to collect it.

Normally I would have made this collection by car, but in this ‘last minute emergency’, I was obliged by circumstances to travel with my rug companion by train.

So there we were, side by side on the platform, both drawing odd stares from our fellow travellers, she in “Those Shoes!”, and me with “Aladdin’s Flying Carpet” at my side.

And so, we chatted, shared, and shut out the rest of the World for a few minutes.

Is it not amazing what we reveal to perfect strangers, when we think we are otherwise anonymous?