Have you ever met a stranger, who you never saw again, that you still think about?

ExConstance, I love the idea of your angels.

I was out with a friend some 15years ago and the most handsome man i have ever seen walked up to me and told me i was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He was gorgeous, however, i had just got engaged. I am now divorced and remarried, but often wonder about the handsome one and what might have been!

I met Estée Lauder in the ladies room of a smart restaurant in Paris in the late 1980s. She smiled at me while we were washing our hands ( I did not realise who she was at the time). She then said I needed to have a bit of lipstick to "brighten me up", and proceeded to give me a rapid but much needed makeover ( I was young and gauche). Explaining she was in Paris for a few days, she scribbled on a card and told me to go to the reception of her hotel the next day when something would be waiting for me. I duly turned up, feeling totally intimidated , and a basket of Estée Lauder goodies was waiting for me with the sweetest note, wishing me well for the future.

A woman and her children that I let stay in my flat in 2011 during the Manchester riot. She'd got off a train from Liverpool to a city in shut down and gangs roaming smashing windows. I had gone outside to check the dopey neighbours hadnt left the doors unlocked and saw her crying by a broken phone box.
She was drunk and unloaded her life story about her abusive ex and how he made her work as a prostitute. Her children were gorgeous but so quiet. She rang her new boyfriend who also sounded like a real piece of work and he came to get them.
I did try to give her the number for women's aid but she wasn't really listening to me. I hope she managed to make a happy life

About 10 years ago now I met a young trans lad who was a friend of a friend and was not too long into living as a man. I chatted with him for most of the night and we got on really well. Our mutual friend told me at the end of the night that the lad had really appreciated that I'd accepted him as male straight away but it never occurred to me to do otherwise. I never saw him again but I think of him and wonder whether he's happy now as he was struggling a bit at the time we met.

About eight years ago I was getting the bus back home from town and ended up sitting next to an elderly lady who began chatting to me. She told me that she'd been in town to buy a new pair of shoes and has searched high and low for some that she liked, but had eventually found some and she took them out of the bag and began showing them to me. When we reached my stop I said goodbyes nd and got off, as the bus pulled off I noticed the lady was waving at me through the window and so I waved back to her.

I got thaf bus loads more times but never saw her again. I got the impression she was lonely and glad of someone to talk to, she was in her 80's then and I often wonder if she's even still alive.

2005 and I was on Mat leave, DS was 16 weeks old. I had an interview with GAP in London. I went to get in my car to drive and Ex twunt DH said don't go over 80mph or it makes a knocking sound, but it drives ok.
(He'd bloody damaged my beloved sports car pissing about in it and not told me or fixed it.)

Anyhow on the motorway as it was too late to do anything. Car starts driving really strangely so I slow right down in the inner lane. Suddenly I see flames licking the windows, I pull in and the engine (in the back) is on fire, black smoke everywhere.

I try to get out of the car. Then realise my phone wallet etc is on the passenger seat. I open the door to grab them and a guy grabs me by the waist and pulls me from the car just as the flames really take hold.

He was a lorry driver who'd seen what had happened and pulled infront of me, whilst radioing another driver to pull in behind. The other guy called the fire brigade and police.

He dragged me away from the car as the flames were reaching everywhere, and black spumes of smoke covered us.

Lifted me into his cab and climbed in. Poured me a cup of tea from his thermos and strangely lit me a cigarette. He was about to bollock me gently but he saw my then Puss in Boots eyes in my sooty smeared face.

Give me a hug and called me cariad. This made me burst into tears as I am Welsh. Told him and he pulled out a tin of Welsh cakes from the back, his wife had made that day.

So we sat and chatted until the police took me to their car.

I never got the chance to find out his name, or the other guy. I was in shock and didn't even see the haulage company name.

But if he hadn't pulled me away I might have left DS motherless that day.

He was a little Welsh Guardian Angel. ????

When I was about 18 I went to Manchester to have an interview at the Uni.
I was travelling alone and had taken a radio with me for company. It must have been about 1993.
I laughed out loud at something on the radio and the lad opposite me did too.
We got talking about what we were listening to and from that on to my reason for travelling to Manchester. He gave me some advice about busses to catch etc. I seem to recall he got off at Stockport.

Lovely thread!

Queuing up to get into a club with the girls probably 20 years ago (in my twenties), I locked eyes with a tall blonde boy... we couldn't not stare at each other, it was electric. He walked into the club with his mates. I hoped I'd be able to find him inside. He came and found me (told me he searched high and low) and we spent the whole night kissing like a couple of teenagers. The connection was amazing. I didn't know his name. I didn't try and find out, I often wonder why I didn't even get his number! He was beautiful and shy almost, I don't know - so hard to explain. It wasn't the norm for me, and I got the same feeling from him. I knew where he lived (town) and I have often wondered about him and how my life would have been if we'd taken things further. I have never in my life felt anything like it, it was incredible. Precious memories...

Have just remembered another. Eight years ago at Christmas i took Wilf to DL Paris. We were staying on the top floor of a four storey hotel and the fire alarm went off at midnight!! I was petrified and ran out on to the landing as did several other people. I said "OMG how am i going to get my son out he is disabled!" A lovely Australian couple said "do you need help moving him?" and i explained he was deaf and autistic. They followed me into the room. The man looked at the evacuation plan on the back of the door. The lady gathered Wilf's clothes up. I shook Wilf. He opened his eyes looked at me and said "Go away Mumma" Second shake i got "i alright Mumma." Third shake i signed "FIRE" and Wilf shot out of the bed. We managed to get him dressed and down the stairs. All the way down the stairs i was thinking "where's the fire? am i going to get out alive? Why did i ever watch The Towering Inferno?" When we eventually got outside it was -3 so they let us all into to reception and Wilf went and hid in the corner. It turned out that a drunk man had set fire to a smoke alarm with a cig lighter!!!" I would have loved a few minutes alone with him!!!
I thanked the couple profusely before we were allowed back upstairs and in the morning before we left i slid a thankyou note under their door.
I wouldnt have got Wilf out by myself and was so grateful for their help!

When I was about 18 I went to Covent Garden with dm and dsis. After a while, they went off to look at something in a shop and I said I would wait where I was. So I propped myself against a balustrade, trying to look all cool. A handsome Mediterranean type, tanned and curly haired in a whit linen suit (hey! It was the 80s) came up to me and asked, in heavy, exotic accents, "Excuse me, is your name Ingrid?" I, in my witty sophistication, replied "no." He walked on. When dm and dsis returned I related what had happened with a flush. They chorused "yeah, right!" Then, about five minutes later, he walked past again and gave me a lovely smile as I stood with my family. Now dm and dsis went "whoooooo!"

I had been in hospital for ten days undergoing tests as I had lost the feeling in my legs and arms. Following an MRI I had just been told it was due to a disc which had lodged in my spinal cord and I needed to undergo immediate surgery but I might not walk again. I was given the news on my own with the curtain pulled round my bed, and I was terrified.
A short while later a lady was admitted with a suspected stroke. She came into my cubicle and told me she had had the very same operation, showed me her scar, told me she recovered well and that I would be fine.
The funny thing was, I shouldn't have been in the stroke unit at all, it was a lack of beds which put me there. She had been brought in by her son and was adamant she wasn't staying and discharged herself that same night.
I really felt as if she just arrived to comfort me. I'll never forget her.

(And I did regain the use of my arms & legs!)

The lovely man who comforted me when aged 17 I had to get a train home from London after my first boyfriend had dumped me. I blubbed all over his shoulder.

The Kiwi Girl, Anna, that I had one crazy night out with in Sydney, she was like my best friend and I wish we had exchanged contact details.

And the guy at Run To The Sun that I watched the sun come up with in 1998. Nothing happened, we just chatted all night. I'd like to know he is happy. He wasn't at the time.

What a lovely thread so many fantastic people out there

I once saw a girl, probably in her early teens or slightly younger, having an argument with her mum in Reading town centre. The girl was really distraught - not sure if she had mental health problems or was just really angry about whatever it was they were arguing about - and she started smashing eggs (they were outside a shop that had trays of eggs outside on crates). She must have smashed at least two trays of them. She was shouting "Mum get off me" and her mum was trying to restrain her by her arm.

For some reason (I was in my early 20s and had never done anything like that in my life) my sympathies were instinctively totally with the girl. She just had so much emotion. I'll never know what caused it all, but I really hoped she would manage to break free of her mum's grip and just run and run until she felt free. Now I know what it's like to be a parent, I'd probably react very differently if I saw an incident like that now, but I've often wondered what became of that girl and whether she's OK.

I was a very highly-strung and sensitive child with many neuroses and anxiety issues. Many years ago (early 70s, I was about 7 or 8) I was in a pub in South London with my mum. A lady came in and we ended up talking for what felt like hours. She told me all about the issues she had had as a child which were very similar to mine and I realised that I was not the only one who had these things.

She also told me this story of when she was little, she had a dog on wheels. She was convinced the dog on wheels was a dead dog, so she cut it open with a large knife and all this stuffing came out!

Meeting this lady was truly life changing for me, as I realised that the things I felt and thought were normal. I think about her all the time. I would love to meet her again to thank her for being so kind to me.

I was 25, insecure as hell and going out with a dreadful, perpetually stoned bloke who told me I was a lovely person but he didn't actually fancy me because I was too fat...

...and why oh why didn't I shout out to the cute bloke going on the down escalator at Leicester Sq tube, as I was on the up one and we gazed at each other and burst out laughing "WAIT" and dash down to meet him? I often wonder.

I was on a train going out of Waterloo and meant to be viewing a flat in Clapham. The train sailed through Clapham junction without stopping, to my surprise - it was a fast train to Woking. (I thought all trains out of Waterloo stopped at Clapham, it seems not).

I got in a panic about being late for the appointment as I needed to find a flat quite badly - my then BF had split up with me. The man next to me started to chat with me and reassured me I would not be too late.

I made some comment about how hard it was finding flatshares but I didn't want to live by myself because it was so lonely being single unexpectedly, and he said in a very warm and reassuring way 'oh but you won't be on your own forever'.

I am very introverted so to talk to a stranger on a train is usually beyond me, but he was so kind to me it cheered me up for days - and made me feel confident that there would be other men out there that would show an interest in me.

I was on a hen weekend in Dublin about 10 years ago. Our first night there I met a guy in the first pub we went to. We locked eyes, chatted, he bought me a drink and then I left with my friends. We moved onto the next place, not really knowing where we were going and lo and behold about an hour later 'pub man' was back. We laughed about 'must stop meeting like this' we had a few drinks and we kissed (quite a lot!).
I was smitten, he wrote his number in my fag box paper.....

And I threw it away!!

I have photos of that weekend with him in some, we looked like we were together. His name was mark.

The young lad who had been hit head on in his car and was wandering around shocked in the road. I took his hand, calmed him down and sat him down. I left him with the police once they arrived.... I did meet him a few weeks later and he said he recognised me but didnt know where from. I told him where from and he said I had been his "guardian angel" that day.

The lovely ladies who were sat around us on our first plane journey with our son who said how well behaved he had been when we had had a difficult time with him as he became unsettled.

I tend to engage with a lot of strangers but here are a few:

Two years ago me, dp and ds went to Margate for the day. When we got on the train back my foot slipped and I fell down between the train and the platform. I managed to pull myself up and was mercifully not seriously hurt but I was covered in cuts and bruises, and blood. The train guard just stood there and asked whether we were going to get on this train or not. Dp took me off the train as I was bleeding at this point, and a lovely woman got off as well, helped to rince all my cuts with water and was generally lovely while I felt like a complete prat. She told us she only lived in the next town and was going to see her bf who she'd been with for fifteen years but they'd never managed to live together yet. As it turned out that train was the last on-time train of the evening so not only were we delayed but she had been as well. We offered to pay for her to get a taxi home but she wouldn't hear of it and got on a local train about 1.5 hours later. I often remember her.

About a year ago I had just come back from London and had been supposed to meet a client but he had cried off at the last minute so I headed home. As I got on the train a woman made a comment about my guide dog and we got chatting. She told me that she had just been told her own dog had cancer and they were going to have to decide whether to have him pts or not. she said she was having a rubbish week and had felt really ill and just been sent home from work. I just talked to her for a while, and when we got off at the same station I gave her my number and told her to let me know how things were. She texted me her number and I did text a few days later, she thanked me for my kindness and said she hadn't made a decision about her dog yet but I had helped her when she was feeling very low.

When I was 16 I went to France on a French exchange. At a party I had a kiss and cuddle with an adorable French boy, named Rudi. I sometimes think about him and wonder if he remembers that party when he got off with that Irish girl. I hope he does, he was so cute.

I lived in Paris in my early 20s.

A man stopped me on a bridge and asked if he could take my photo. I said yes, and he did.

I often wondered who he was and where the photo ended up!

I swear I've met the man who should be my stepfather

It was in Kerry, three years ago. He was having tea and cake at the table next to us. He was American, and there was just something about him. He pulled a couple of faces with my little boy, and left, but not before saying 'Maybe next time' to my DS who had refused to wave back.

I thought about him all day and how he and my mother would be perfect for each other , then saw him standing in the rain waiting for a taxi. It was the second chance to 'find him' but there was no room in the car at all, and so we had to drive past.

I still think about him. Whatever makes a stranger remain warm and welcome in your mind years later, he had it in spades.

Not a stranger but I'd had a MASSIVE crush on a devastingly handsome man (years ago pre DH). I'm not doing myself a disservice by saying he was way out of my league

On my birthday we were out with friends, in a dark club, all quite merry. Not knowing what possessed me, I asked him where my birthday kiss was. He smiled and gave me a lovely longer-than-usual kiss on the cheek. Feeling brave I propelled him to a bar stool, sat him down, put my hands on his face and snogged him for all I was worth (it was reciprocated btw!).

It was all I imagined it would be and I felt amazing

But I also knew it would amount to zero and just like Love Actually, I told myself that now it was "enough".