A lonely stranger on Christmas invites a young, lost traveller into his home, sheltering him from the icy Edinburgh streets, and sparking an unlikely lifelong friendship. This story was selected as the winner in our “A Human Moment” travel writing competition sponsored by Travel Lemming.
The letter arrived on a Tuesday—thin, weightless, the pale blue of a washed-out sky. Inside, the handwriting leaned slightly to the right: “John passed away in his sleep. It looks like it was a heart attack. Your letter was open on his bedside table. I thought I should let you know.”
For a long moment, I simply stared at it, the room narrowing to a single slanting line of ink. I had been planning to see him soon, to show him my country and return a little of the warmth and generosity he had once given so freely. Instead, I sat at my desk with the aerogramme trembling in my hands, feeling something in me collapse—my world had skipped a beat.
Our story began four years earlier, on a sun-bright but icy London afternoon. My boss, in an unexpected aside, told me I could take leave from Christmas until after New Year. It was 1986; I was eighteen, restless, underfed, chronically broke, and trying to pretend I belonged in that cold northern hemisphere city. On my lunch break, I bolted to a bucket shop off Charing Cross Road, where a giant poster of Edinburgh stopped me in my tracks. My storytelling grandmother had been from there. In my imagination, the city glowed with half-remembered memories.
The return coach ticket was miraculously affordable.
I left from outside King’s Cross half an hour before midnight, the city shuttered for Christmas Eve, streets wet and glistening. The bus—filled with silent but determined people travelling long distances—smelled of diesel and wet wool. Halfway north, our coach broke down, and we stood on a frozen roadside while hazard lights blinked into the dark. We were eventually absorbed into a second bus travelling the same route. I ended up wedged on the narrow stairs to the top deck with a limp tomato-and-cheese sandwich collapsing like wet cardboard. I fitted right in.
At eight the next morning, I spilled onto the pavement in Edinburgh. My breath fogged my specs, and my nose streamed from the cold. My Karrimor pack thumped against my spine as the first light gently wiped the sky awake. I dug out my YHA guide with clumsy, gloved fingers and tried to orient myself. A thumbnail map pointed confidently towards Castle Rock. Or so I believed. Only when I found myself near St Giles Cathedral, watching the Christmas mass disperse onto the cobbles, did I realise I was nowhere near where I should be.
“Ai, laddie—where’re ye headed?”
Standing in front of me, he was short, well-dressed, with a flat cap, a scarf, and leather gloves, and silver sideburns that glinted in the morning light. His nose glowed from the cold.
“The youth hostel,” I said, grinning, and held out the guide. “Am I close, sir?”
“Not far,” he said, gesturing eastwards. “I’m John. I’m walking that way. Come along, young man—I’ll show you.”
We fell easily into step. He wanted to know where my accent came from—Australia? New Zealand? And what on God’s green earth was I doing this far north? I told him I’d been on the road for nearly a year. What I didn’t say was that at eighteen, I was weary and lonely. And pining for a southern hemisphere summer because my loneliness had begun to feel like a coat I couldn’t shake off.
As we walked, he pointed out landmarks: famous ones, secret ones, and told me the stories tucked between them. The city glowed in winter light, stone warmed to honey against a blue sky. We crossed an elegant stone bridge, its height startling.
“This is the Dean Bridge—sometimes called the Bridge of Sighs,” he said. Far below, the Water of Leith slipped past—a long, dark thread of ribbon stitching the city together.
“When I was a wee yin, my mother would hold me up high to see The Little Sailor Boy.” He said the forlorn and now almost completely hidden statue was placed there in memory of a sailor who had leapt from the viaduct. A warning, he said, to anyone else who might be thinking of doing the same.
I remember glancing at him then—the steady way he spoke; there was a gentleness, yet gravity, in his voice.
At a T-junction, he paused.
“The hostel’s up that way. My place is down there. Why don’t ye come and stay? It’ll save ye money—and it’s Christmas. Also, I’ll conjure us up a fine meal.”
I tried, awkwardly, to decline. I couldn’t imagine imposing on someone on this of all days—but he waved it off.
“C’mon, laddie,” he insisted. “It’s icy out. And I could do with the company.”
His terraced house faced a long winter-bare park. The white-painted door with its large burnished knocker and Yule wreath opened onto warmth: sunlight, books, plants, classical music, and the central heating ticking and clicking on low. I double-wiped my sneakers on the mat and crossed the threshold, instantly knowing this was no youth hostel. There was a sense of careful order, of solitude made very comfortable, but nothing sad.
He showed me to a spare bedroom—a double bed, two lamps, shelves of books, plants soaking up the light. The faint musk of the room reminded me of old book pages opened after many years. I set my backpack down gingerly, as though afraid to disturb something, and took off my shoes.
Lunch was later served in the tiny kitchen: smoky haddock soup, roast turkey and beef, haggis, which I tasted for the first time, turnip and potato mash, and gravy made properly, straight from the pan. Also, mulled whisky in a crystal glass. While we ate, John spoke about music and composers as though they were old friends of his. In turn, I listened to him, unsure why it felt so easy to let him guide me into an unfamiliar terrain.
The afternoon unfolded quietly. Sunlight slid across the floor; the fire snapped and crackled softly; wind pressed against the windowpanes. We read in companionable silence, the deep stillness of Christmas settling around us like fresh snow. That night I slept beneath a sumptuous down duvet so soft it made the world feel constellations away.
The next morning–after satisfying porridge, kippers, oatcakes, and buttered morning rolls–he drove us into the Highlands in his small, faded red car. The mountains were a tawny lion-colour under a heavy grey sky; snow dusted the peaks. The narrow roads wound along lochs, one after another. At Loch Ness, he stopped and said, with mock solemnity, “There be monsters,” and we both laughed. There was childlike delight in him–a softness and humour I enjoyed.
The days unwound gently–long conversations, long silences, evenings with books and tapes he insisted I take back to London to play on my battered Walkman. In the afternoons, I wandered Edinburgh, rain soaking through my shoes, and returned to what had quickly become a temporary home. I realised that I had been welcomed without suspicion or agenda.
Our last morning arrived too soon.
Our final drive was to St Andrew Square Bus Station, where he handed me a parcel of food for the journey and two neatly labelled cassettes.
“Farewell, laddie. Write ’til we meet again.”
And I did.
During two years of national service more than six thousand miles south of Auld Reekie, aerogrammes travelled between us with comforting regularity. This, despite the clipped, brutal structure of army life. His handwriting became a reminder that the world was much bigger than the one I’d been conscripted into.
I saw him once more in December 1989. His hair had thinned a little; mine had grown long and dishevelled; the awkwardness I’d feared never materialised. He had welcomed me into his home like a returning son.
In 1990–the year Mandela walked free, the year the country stepped into its unsteady promise of freedom–John was planning to visit. But as township violence flared again, he wrote to postpone the trip. He didn’t feel it was safe. I sighed, but understood. We had time, I thought.
Then came one final aerogramme.
It was heftier than the others.
Inside was a cheque for £500–an unimaginable sum to me then–and a short, wavering note:
“Don’t spend this on travelling. Use it for your university tuition. Love, John.”
I sat with the letter for a long time, the ink smudged slightly under my thumb. This was a final gesture of the deep, steady generosity he had shown me from the moment I’d stumbled lost into his city.
When the Tuesday letter came telling me he was gone, it was not only the news of his death that winded me. It was the realisation that one of the great, quiet friendships of my young life had begun with a stranger saying, on a cold Christmas morning, Come along, laddie—I’ll show you where you’re headed.
And in many ways, he did.
