Tuesday 6 September 2011

A Mere Coincidence? Yes. No. Maybe.

The window display in the local Christian bookshop seems to have overdone it on putting together the window display, using as many signs as possible. But at least the vendeuse had a sense of humour and you can read anything you like into the close proximity of these signs.

I was on my way to the local Chinese restaurant at the time and felt that they might well be a warning to the forthcoming black bean sauce.

It turned out that the 'welcome' and the 'blessed' aspects were particularly short lived and the 'stressed' and the 'toilet' were .... no I won't go into details. The message in the shop window was so correct, that I decided to look at the display in the other window on the way home.

Ha, Ha, I thought. Very funny - no way will I experience or need a miracle.

But I did.

The water pump packed up in the middle of nowhere, on the drive home. Steam hissed and rose steadily from under the bonnet. The engine stopped. We were stranded. few cars would be coming along the road and there was a family of four sitting like stewed prunes. The children had to be at school in two hours and the situation seemed hopeless.

Then, around the corner, returning from a trip to the Lake District, came the garage owner. He stopped and gave us a tow to his garage, before driving us home. Extraordinary.

I will be paying particular notice to the next window display at the Christian bookshop when it changes. I hope there are no Tarot Cards.  

2 comments:

  1. I sometimes hitch hike (or more accurately hitch bike) and the number of times that kismet has wafted its magic are amazing - the lift I got from Hilton Park to 400m from my door in a taxi returning from an urgent courier job, similarly after I missed the train back from Coach & Bus show, and managed to land at Knutsford just as the guy returning a bus to Falkirk rolled up - again a short ride home.

    Works with trains too (mostly).

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  2. You are right Dave, things have a strange way of panning out when all seems lost.

    It can work the other way too. years ago I had to park, due to a breakdown in a lay-by in the middle of nowhere in Poland and sleep in the back of the truck on some sacks of soya beans.

    It was a freezing cold night.

    A bus load of Communist Party apparatchiks returning from a drunken conference steamed into the lay-by. An unusual sort of help - but help nonetheless, I thought.

    But no. They descended out of the bus, breathed vodka fumes, slurred some incomprehensible words, pee'd on my wheels, staggered back onto the bus and drove off.

    C'est la vie. It was back to the soya bean sacks.

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