The kindness of strangers: I thought I’d lost my flute for ever, then a chance to play Greensleeves returned it to me

4 hours ago 2

I was 21, living in Sydney, working as a glassie at a local pub and feeling a bit lost. I didn’t know what to do in life – the one thing I had going for me was playing the flute.

I’d saved for two years to buy my flute when I was 16 and earning $2.35 an hour at the supermarket. Every day I would come home and play it. It would help me process my emotions.

One day I was working at the pub when someone asked me what I was doing that night. I said: “I’m going to be playing the flute at –”. Then I suddenly realised that I hadn’t picked up my flute when I got off the train that day. I immediately and completely freaked out. I was so annoyed I threw the plastic chair I was holding across the room.

I raced to the train station to ask if it had been handed in. It hadn’t, but I gave them my number anyway in case it turned up. I just thought, well, it’s gone – stupidly, I didn’t even have my name written on the case. I spent the following week in total self-recrimination mode, getting drunk and feeling sorry for myself.

Then, one day, I got a call from someone at CityRail saying they had my flute. I went into the lost property place at Central and there it was, amid all the lost bags and umbrellas. As I went to grab it, the guards there asked for my ID. I’d moved to Australia from New Zealand, and the only ID I had was an expired passport at my parents’ house somewhere. I told them I didn’t have any ID on me, and that it might be quite difficult to get any. And they said, well, sorry – you’ve got to have ID to get your flute back.

Desperate and scrambling, I said: “What if I play you a tune?” So I opened up the flute, put it together, and played Greensleeves. I guess the really strong feeling of returning to something that I loved, and had missed so badly all that time, came through in the music. I think the guards actually teared up a bit – I know I did. “That’s your flute,” they said, seeming quite awed. And I just walked away without showing any ID. It was a double kindness – first from the person who handed my flute in, and then the guards who waived the rules to let me take it.

There’s an image of big cities as soulless places, or that there’s an absence of civic responsibility and everyone is just out for themselves. But I have to say, I’ve had difficult times in my life. I was unofficially housed for a certain period. I was a busker on the streets playing that same flute for many years. And through that all I’ve found people are very kind, and they’re kind to people who they’ve got no prospect of receiving anything from in return. They’re kind in a general way, just to other human beings, because they can be.

Ever since that day at the train station, I have been even more inclined to return items that are lost than I might have been otherwise, because I’m just so grateful to that person who returned my flute. It’s been 30 years, and I haven’t forgotten their gesture.