Life is weird sometimes. Even a normal looking day can deliver unexpected surprises.

Earlier this week I had a meeting in London with a potential client. Nothing strange there. Neither was it strange that this was my first meeting in Canary Wharf and equally normal that I got a little lost en-route. But then the weirdness began.

Chatting to my potential new client it turns out he is from the same part of the world as me. Naturally I ask where – being Welsh we probably know the same people! You can’t imagine my surprise when he says he’s from the same village as me. I was bowled over. Here is somebody the same age as me from the same village as me that I’ve just met for the first time on the 40th floor of a skyscraper in London’s Docklands. Did I know him and I’ve just forgotten? Probably not.

He went to St Andrews and I went to Murch Junior and he moved away when he was 10. I’m certain that we’d have had friends in common, which, incidentally, is how he was introduced to me in the first place. And that’s the start of the second thing that happened.

He was referred to me by his wife’s ex-colleague who was also one of my ushers at my wedding (the ex-colleague not his wife). So I thought I’d give him a call and see what he was up to. As it turned out he had just finished a client meeting in the City and guess what? He was heading back to the office in Paddington. The very station I was going to be departing from.

To cut a long story short  we managed to catch up and spend a wonderful 45 minutes sharing a sandwich and memories about the good old days. We played rugby together for four years,  lived together for two years and found ourselves in a number of amusing situations. We used to have a lot of fun! It was great to see him but over all too quickly. Time for him to return to his office and me to return to Wiltshire. And as I sat in my seat on the train the third little surprise fell into my lap.

As I pulled down the folding tray on the seat in front of me (so that I had somewhere for my phone and drink) it revealed a copy of that day’s Metro. I am not a great one for news (that’s a whole other story) let alone newspapers, but it was there in front of me and I couldn’t stop myself picking  it up and leafing through yesterday’s stories. On page 22 in the ‘guilty pleasures’ section was a headline that caught my eye. ‘Louis was my Mr Positive as I lost my cash’. I continued to read – after all, the grubby, well thumbed Metro was probably my guilty pleasure and I couldn’t resist the irony.

It was a story about former Westlife singer Shane Filan’s finances. The ageing ‘heart throb’ had recently been declared bankrupt after he lost £18 million in the Irish property crash in 2008. The X Factor judge (and former Westlife manager) Louis Walsh had apparently provided some much-needed positivity into Filan’s dire situation with the words “You haven’t lost your voice, if you did then, you’d be in serious trouble”. For those who endure the weekly X Factor ordeal on a Saturday evening, such deep philosophical musings will come as no surprise. Although the cynic in me would have expected more of a “I tink you’re going to be the next big ting”. I digress, and anyway that’s not the strange bit.

The strange bit was that Shane Filan went on to say something profoundly important when looking at peoples finances (if viewed through the eyes of a financial planner). He admitted that money was no longer his main driving force: “I felt a lot less pressure when I realised that money doesn’t actually make you happy”. He went on to say “It’s more about having a great marriage and happy children. That’s what life is all about”. Those are wise words. Amassing money for no purpose is pointless. There’s only one point to money – and that is you can spend it. It’s better to focus energies on having a great time.

With that the Metro was closed and an amazing two hours was brought to a close. So what did I learn? Nothing. But I most definitely was reminded of something that is all too easy to forget in our pursuit of stuff…

It’s not about money it’s about people and in particular the people you’re lucky enough to meet. It’s about experiences and sharing those experiences and it’s about living the life you want. As I watched suburbia transition gently to rolling countryside as the train sped West the previous couple of hours really got me thinking…

I thought about almost meeting somebody. Living in the same village for 10 years but never actually crossing paths. How many other people have I ‘almost’ met? I thought about seeing friends and family and how great it is to spend time with people who clearly enjoy spending time with you. Life’s too short to spend it around people who don’t make you happy. It reminded me that there is surely only one true source of happiness – and that’s having great experiences with people you care about. And it reminded me that no matter where you go in the UK you are never more than 15 minutes from an X Factor reference!

By the time the train pulled into my station I had a warm fuzzy glow and was really looking forward to seeing the special people in my life again.