So, when I headed down Charing Cross Road, I sort of vaguely recognised the guy and said hello... On the way back to Feltham (via Staines), we'd quite a long chat covering music (he'd deliberately immersed himself in Western Music by getting about 200 CDs covering popular music from about 1900 on - he already knew the classical stuff) and literature (he'd taken a similar course with a collection of Penguin/Wordsworth-type classics and was currently racing through Robert Louis Stephenson). Apparently his current evening entertainment is to sit by the fire with a good beer, some 1930's french music on the CD, and "The Master of Ballintrae".
I've no idea what it was he used to do in Afghanistan, but I rather suspect that it wasn't mini-cab driving.
Oh, and the CD he played as we headed west had some wonderful stuff on it -- really old Bing Crosby (which surprised me by how much fun it was, Charles Trenet (whose "La Mer" is my current earworm -- I'm sure I remember a pretty good vaguely-recent film used it as mood music), some other Usual Suspects of the French persuasion, and an American woman whose name I've currently lost, but had a magnificent voice...