I had an extraordinary moment of synchronicity outside Birmingham Central Library yesterday.

I’m hovering at the Chamberlain Square entrance to Paradise Forum (a really nasty piece of 1970s concrete brutalism) trying to find a couple of friends who are late for the Human Dignity Conversation Group meeting and who can’t find the room. I can’t see them anywhere, so I’m scanning the people entering and leaving Paradise Forum.

I see a woman towing a suitcase out of Paradise Forum and into Chamberlain Square. There’s something familiar about her. I’m sure I know her. But not in central Birmingham…

‘Deirdre?’

The woman turns. Looks puzzled for the briefest of moments. Exclaims, ‘Barney!’

And then we’re hugging and talking and catching up with news.

Deirdre Hayward (and her husband, Nigel) are old and very close friends from our days in Shetland in the 1970s and 1980s - and they still live there. I haven’t seen Deirdre since Erica and I visited Shetland in 2003 for the Golden Jubilee of the Baha’i community there. Deirdre convened and conducted the Capella Singers, a small choir of eight unaccompanied voices I was part of in Shetland.

I’m still looking for the friends for the Human Dignity conversation. We were supposed to start at 10:30 a.m., but it’s now 11:15. But I want to hear all Deirdre’s news and she mine. Deirdre’s been examining in music for one of the examination boards for eight days in Birmingham and is off to Sutton Coldfield. We swap news of ourselves, our families.

‘When are you coming to Shetland again?’ Deirdre asks.

I make some enthusiastic sounds - actually, I would love to visit Shetland again.

Deirdre’s parting shot: ‘Don’t just say you’re coming. Come next summer!’

If Viv and Rita hadn’t arrived late for the Human Dignity meeting, and if I hadn’t told them that I’d come and find them and take them to our meeting room, and if they hadn’t been out of site, I might not have had this wonderful opportunity to see and catch up with a friend from Shetland in the middle of Birmingham.

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