I live in a town with a strong sense of community. In the twelve minute walk from my front door to my local coffee shop I will inevitably pass people I know.

I might bump into a woman I know outside the second hand book shop, I might wave to a bloke passing on his bike. I like that about living here. I like having those connections.

Once I reach my local coffee shop — a place where everybody knows your name — I often feel like Norm in Cheers. Just without the beer. Here the owners and regulars know each other, what our jobs are, who our partners and kids are, what we get up to.

I value that sense of community; but I also like what a big city or an unfamiliar place brings - where everybody doesn’t know your name. On my regular days in London, in contrast to those in my neighbourhood, I sometimes prefer that anonymity, to walk around a place where people don’t know who I am.

But revelling in anonymity is not about hiding away. Anonymity gives me a choice. It gives me the choice to hide behind my headphones and get on with my day, to sip my coffee and work on that document, head down. Or it gives me the choice to sit up, look around, to follow my curiosity and talk to strangers.

Earlier this year I was on an overnight flight from JFK back to Heathrow. It had been a tiring week so I was looking forward to getting some much needed sleep. Just before take off a nervous flyer a few rows ahead asked if I minded switching seats. So at the last minute I found myself in a seat I wasn’t meant to be in; a two-seat configuration next to a woman from New York. We got talking and spent the next few hours drinking red wine, deconstructing episodes of Girls that we watched on our screens in front of us. Later as the cabin lights dimmed so people could sleep, we hit the overhead light switch, sweet-talked the cabin crew for more wine, and kept talking.

Many of us have had that sense of connection that comes from talking to our neighbour on a flight. And of course it doesn’t always go that well. But, when it does, there is something quite life affirming to be totally candid with another human being — a total stranger — in such close proximity. How two people sitting next to each other on a ‘plane can — in a seven hour relationship — go from introductory handshake to sharing a joke, being on the same wavelength, sharing an experience.(And then we never see them again).

Of course, we still have a choice. We can pretend to sleep or to put headphones on or just be honest. I realise not everyone likes to talk to strangers.

This week a bloke in a London coffee shop mistook my pronunciation of ‘no worries’ — after he apologised for his coat and bag encroaching on my table — for me being a fellow Australian. We could have left the exchange there, but I was curious. We got talking: he was an Airbus pilot and started showing me GoPro videos on his phone of him ski-ing and scuba diving. Of course, just like my New Yorker, I won’t see him again. But that’s not the point: I’m not looking for more friends. And let’s face it — my wife might not like it if I hang out with my Girls-watching red-wine-drinking ‘plane buddy.

It’s good to talk to a stranger. To enjoy a basic, human connection free of any baggage or agenda. It’s about living in the moment in its richest sense, free in the knowledge that it is temporary, that it is for now. And only for now. With neither party asking, or worrying about, what comes next.

And being mistaken for an Australian this week reminded me how a random remark can lead you to discover more about an otherwise unknown person at the next table or in the adjacent aircraft seat.

There will always be times when we opt to keep our heads down and keep ourselves to ourselves. But some days it’s nice to sit up, to take notice and talk to a stranger.