He was just an old guy at her bus-stop.  She was just a young woman rushing to get to work.  But they struck up a random friendship which is helping both see how making a difference can be the most natural thing in the world.

Denny and Ashleigh got talking as they waited on the bus from Portstewart to Coleraine one chilly morning.  As they chatted about the weather and made small talk they couldn’t have realised that this was the start of a unique friendship.

As Ashleigh says: “We chatted on the bus as well and I didn’t really think much about it.  Then in the weeks following we kept ending up on the same bus even though it was at different times.

“We were able to continue chatting and see how each other was.”

From then their paths seemed to keep crossing.  Ashleigh bumped into Denny on the promenade in Portstewart and realised that he lived in fold housing close to where she lived.  So she decided to bake him an apple pie and bring it to him.

She loves introducing her friends to Denny whenever she sees him out and about: “I love the simplicity of it - I think being part of a community where people get to know each other like this, bump into each other and build random friendships is amazing.

“I also love the idea of bridging the gap between old and young.”

Ashleigh says her story isn’t very special.  But the fact is that it is - because not enough of us are building these random friendships.  It would be great if her story wasn’t that special, because then it would be so natural for us to cut through those bus-stop silences.

“It’s challenged me to think about making the effort with people I wouldn’t normally know,” says Ashleigh, “And i think Denny appreciates it too.

“I was with my housemate just on Saturday and I saw Denny on the prom again with one of his friends. I went over to say hello and he was just really happy that we’d come over and bothered to stop.

“Hopefully we will continue to stay random friends.”