Towards the end of the nineties I was a young computer science student standing on an almost deserted suburban above-ground underground station waiting for the next train into the centre of London.
A very old but brisk and snappy gentleman in traditional gentleman's clothes came onto the platform, and for some reason we nodded genially as you do when you pass strangers on country lanes; in London you ignore absolutely everyone, so it was strange we did this.
And there we stood, waiting for the train. He offered me a peppermint from a small metal tin. Of course my parents taught me to never take sweets from strangers, so I instinctively declined even though I'd now left home and thought of my self as a grown-up.
Anyway, we got talking. At first it was 'what are you studying?' kind of polite interest. He was intrigued that I was a computer science student.
I've gotta underline again how unusual this was, for anyone in London to ever talk to another stranger, but this really happened. I don't think I ever acknowledged there was anyone else in London, ever. It wasn't even normal to know the names of your neighbours.
And so we sat beside each other on an underground train and he told me about his early years as a programmer. Did I know APL, he asked? I had never heard of it! His veiled references suggested he worked with but not for Cheltenham.
And he delighted in telling me programmer war stories from when he did commercial stuff like how a vendor had encrypted their APL programs and he had reverse engineered it and waved the decrypted source-code in front of the firm's rep and complained about shoddy code and bugs! At the time I was tackling Simon Singh's Code Book contest so that kind of story caught my imagination and I begun to wish I'd have that kind of chance in my programming future.
Now, in his old age, he went from his home in the north of England down to London once a week for a charity meeting he chaired. That's the kind of thing respectable old gentleman do to give their life meaning, I guess.
Anyway, afterwards I searched the web for APL (this was before google) and was, of course, gobsmacked.