I used to attend regular meetings at Methodist Church House, which was in Marylebone Road opposite Madame Tussaud’s.

When I left after meetings, I liked to walk to Paddington Station. After a long train journey and two days of meetings and with the prospect of another long train journey to come, it was so good to get a bit of exercise and a bit of air – although calling it fresh air might be stretching a point!

I like walking in London, there is always so much to see – so there was always a spring in my step and a smile on my face. I might have been tempted to break into song – but perhaps that wasn’t quite the thing to do. So instead I used to look at the people I passed in the street and give them all a smile.

I still do that in St Austell when I am walking to church or to the station or to the shops.

But most of the people won’t look at me! They stare straight ahead, or they have their eyes fixed firmly on the ground. 

Some of them are so intent on listening to their iPods or talking into their phones that I wonder how they manage to move at all without bumping into someone or something. Anything rather than look at a stranger in the street.

The stranger in the street is my brother, my sister, my companion on life’s journey.

“We are pilgrims on a journey,

and companions on the road;

we are here to help each other

walk the mile and bear the load.”

As I walked along the street today, I looked at my fellow travellers. Few of them looked at me.

They all seemed to be barricaded inside their own little bubbles, their own worlds – listening to their iPods, talking into their phones, wrapped up in their own thoughts.

They all looked so sad. The cares of the world seemed to envelope them. Smile at a stranger – show them that you care.

Elizabeth Burroughs, Mount Charles Methodist Church