Neither had I until yesterday when I attended a lunch in Derry that was part of one of the funded Irish peace programmes.  It was entitled "Food for Thought" and I was a bit apprehensive to say the least.  I didn't know many of the other 20 or so people (women) there & the ice breakers failed for me.  The first was - find someone wearing the same colour as you & talk to them.  I was wearing lime green.  There was no-one else that daft.  Find someone with the same colour hair as you & talk to them was the next.  There was no-one else so I chose someone nearby with black hair.  We were then paired with a stranger for lunch - someone who had been selected because "they are quite different from you" - our names were called out & off we went to sit down with our dates.

That's mine above.  She's Paddy McNicholl & works for Kilcranny House in Coleraine.  It's a community based project around peace & reconciliation in Northern Ireland & Paddy works there as an Ethnic Minority Support Worker, working with groups of people from other parts of the world who have chosen to live in Coleraine.  On the surface I guess you could say we didn't seem to have much in common.

The facilitator explained that we would be given three statements over lunch & the objective was for us to discuss these with each other at whatever level we decided we were comfortable with.  Another wave of apprehension washed over me as I gazed around the room to see if there were any psychiatrist couches to be seen.  The facilitator also instructed us rather sternly that we were not to digress into small talk & chit chat but to stick to our task in hand.  Paddy & I were making faces at each other by this point & I could tell we were going to get on like a house on fire.

Our three structured questions were as follows:

• What makes you really, really laugh?
• Have you ever been lost?
• Do you ever pretend you understand something when you don't and is it ok to do that?

It was a fascinating couple of hours and thoroughly enjoyable.  I won't say what we discussed in relation to the questions because that's between us - but we did quickly get beyond the superficial & delved into some pretty deep & personal things - which was weird to do with someone you've only just met.  Especially for a control freak like me.  Over the course of the 2 hours we talked about our work, our families, our aspirations, the challenges we have to get past, stuff that annoys us at work and we told each other a few funny stories.  Paddy spent a couple of years living in Bolivia and in the States - so she had a lot of interesting stuff to say.  All I could manage was the story about when my sister & I suggested our long suffering mother should rub her broken false teeth on the holy relic in the cathedral in Boulogne on a day out & the hilarity that ensued - but I guess in conversation, even structured ones, everyone quickly reaches their own level...

Interested to hear any stories readers may have about similar experiences as always.