“Wouldn’t it be funny if we met Brian again?” I asked.

“You could almost guarantee it,” Chris laughed.

We sped along on our bikes to the end off the Newhay path, which was the spot where we had met my old co-worker, sat in his car with his dog called Oscar, two days ago.

“Different time of day,” I said, observing that nobody was around. “I’ll just take a photograph of the arch again because the light is different too.”

I dismounted from my bike and walked into the centre of the road, and as I aimed the camera on my mobile phone, I saw a dog run through the arch first and then a woman running behind it, not quite as fast, and coming towards me. I took the shot regardless.

“You don’t want a photo’ with me in it,” said the runner smiling (obviously not worried about the fact that I had taken the shot without her consent) when she reached me.

“Oh, that’s fine,” I responded, “sometimes it’s nice to have a bit of life in a photograph.”

The lady appeared to suddenly recognise me. She beamed and proceeded to tell me…

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she began in a slight accent, “I’m Dutch and I used to live in Amsterdam. My mother sent me two of your prints – of here (as she spoke she turned her head from side to side in the directions of Aller Arch and the Newhay path) – and I had them in my apartment in Amsterdam for years. And now they are in my house in Dawlish – I live here now!”

How did the Dutch lady know what I look like? Her mother would have bought the prints from a gallery in the town. Unless I run in to the art-loving runner again it shall remain a mystery for, in my excitement, I forgot to ask and soon she had to run on after her dog. Dawlish is a fairly small town, I suppose, and, patently, it is a very small world.