Photo: Annabel Abbs-Streets
Chat benches first appeared five years ago, the brainchild of a British police officer concerned about scammers targeting lonely elderly people. He had encountered a woman so desperate for conversation that she had knowingly given away thousands of pounds, and wondered if a designated spot for safely meeting and talking to strangers might help. Author and empty nester Annabel Abbs-Streets, wondering if a stranger could provide the perspective she needed as she became an empty nester, visited the chat bench in her local London park daily for a week - and found that the sudden intimacy of unexpected encounters was the chat bench’s superpower. Her daily visits brought her radically different perspectives, and she learned that chat benches are for anyone who wants to enrich their life.
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