Mysterious airport people

[Matrixie]

Saw a bloke at the airport. Was sure it was Keanu Reeves. Took a while to realise it wasn’t. Was still nice to look at though.

Guess who sat behind us on the plane.

I spent a bit too much time thinking about who this person might be, where they had been and where they were going. What they might think of me (I was crying, we had been at a funeral).

All very self indulgent.

Has anyone ever spoken to a random stranger at the airport?

I love talking to strangers. My kids find it v embarrassing of me. I’ve never spoken to anyone really famous or anything but I like the human life stories.

I’ll talk to strangers occasionally if the situation calls for it. I like chatting to strangers.
A stranger holding a baby got chatting to me then asked if I’d look after her baby while she went to the toilet. I was happy to help but I would never have done that. Though to be fair, not many people at an airport are likely to run off with someone’s baby.
A random stranger spoke to me quite in depth at an airport once. All about how she’s flying off to be with her boyfriend who’s much younger and her Dd has just started uni so is independent yet she’s still upset.
It was all very cliche and bizarre.

I think airports only really promote the circumstances where you’d talk much to strangers if it’s a tiny airport, your flight is very delayed or you bond when running frantically through an airport to make a connection after something goes wrong (I’m still in touch with someone who carried my bag for me while running through Johannesburg airport after a thunderstorm delayed our arrival from Cape Town — a staff member was supposed to drive us in one of those buggies, but it broke down, and the flight was waiting for us, but couldn’t lose its departure slot, and I was pregnant and travelling alone).

I’ve sat next to/behind Dara O’Briain, Patrick Stewart and Jeremy Irons on flights, and I once saw James Nesbitt and John Hannah having a very luvvyish conversation in a Costa queue at Heathrow. DH has flown in people’s private planes for work quite often, but as his famous encounters were mostly sports people, I never remember who.

I've also been asked to mind someone's baby at an airport (East Midlands), while the mum took her two older children to the toilet. The baby was asleep in the pram,so all I had to do was stand with the pram and luggage, but she was gone for ages and when she came back she had a bag full of sandwiches/crisps so she'd done a bit of shopping too.
I try not to talk to anyone generally, as I prefer to read, but I do look at some people and wonder what their lives are like. If I'm with dh we use the Airport Lounge, it usually has a lot of people working and we play a 'guess what they do' game.
The most famous person I've sat near was one of the Nolan sisters on a Ryanair flight.

My daughter hates going anywhere with me as I attract randoms. Usually weird ones. Doesn't matter if it's an airport, the post office queue or a train journey, people seem to just start talking to me. I actually don't really like people, but for some reason, I quite like talking to random people for a few seconds or minutes. You learn all sorts about other people's lives!