people are just so lovely

So me and my mum were on the way to the hospital today, driving, with plenty of time to get there, as neither of us do being late, it’s just not in our genes, neither was in my dad’s. If anything, we always arrive early, you know, like five or ten minutes or so. I had a mammogram appointment, nothing to worry about, just a routine check up. But on the way, she noticed that the car wasn’t feeling right, the clutch in particular. I didn’t think much of it as me and my mate Juli had been driving her car for a good year grinding that gear shift into place and it seemed to work just fine. But my mum’s car literally just decided to grind to a halt, 5 minutes from the hospital, right on a mini roundabout. A car behind us beeped, super helpful, but then a lady of the third age, as you might say, popped out of nowhere and asked us if we wanted a push ‘she can’t push the car’ whispered my mum. That aint what she’s saying, this woman’s got stamina, determination, and strength, ‘fuck yeah, we’d love a push, thank you.’ I got out the car, and there, across the road was another woman, you wanna hand?’ she called over, ‘oh yes please’ I shouted back, gleaming by this point and then a man appeared out of nowhere to help, and another, who had pulled  over in his cab, got out, come over and went straight to my mum and like the Horse Whisperer said some calming words and frazzled a potential melt down moment. Another man came running over to help and before we knew it we were a team of five, pushing the car across the roundabout to, would you believe, the carpark, just there, of St Mary of the Angels. No having to worry about where to pull over, was it a double yellow, no. The angels were there to welcome us. The semi looking ‘not quite all there’ bloke stopped the traffic for us and away we glided straight into a parking space. Everybody was so lovely, so kind, no one was rushing off, all seeing that we were okay. Gradually the crew dispersed ‘cept Horse Whisperer who insisted on driving us to the hospital, but absolutely refused to let us pay the fare. Mr ‘not quite all there’, who, as it turned out, had just been released from prison yesterday and was banging on about his sleeping situation and ‘can’t we get him some food?’, well he just seemed pretty pissed off with the world. I said I’d try and bring him something back. And off we went with this lovely man who drove us straight to the breast screening clinic. We got there ten minutes early. 

The woman, nurse? who saw me was so warm and fluffy. We were chattin’ away and I told her about what had just happened and just how lovely everybody had been. As you can imagine I was feeling quite blown away by it all. When I got to the bit about the cab driver she literally teared up, she was so touched by his kindness. When he wouldn’t take any money he said put something in the donation pot at the clinic, so I did, although weirdly there were three to choose from, god I didn’t know it was so complicated. Anyway, so whilst I was getting my boobs squashed in all manner of ways, my mum was out in the waiting room chattin’ to some guy who was waiting for his partner to have hers zapped, and he, just like Horse Whisperer absolutely insisted that he give us a life back to mum’s car! He recommended a garage to have it towed to, and when mum accidently left her baseball cap in his car, and they realised when they’d almost got back home, they drove all the way back to us in our angels car park to return it! And as it that wasn’t enough he then gave us their phone number for us to let them know later on how we’d gotten on! Magic! Absolutely fucking magical! Human beings! Such kindness, so caring, what compassion. What interactions we’d had! 

Now we just had to wait for the tow truck. Mr ‘not quite all there’ wasn’t amused when we’d come back empty handed, ‘sorry mate, food just didn’t present itself.’ Mum got on the blower, calling the insurance, sorting out the tow truck, garage, gnarly stuff in a stressy bad phone signal and a thousand bloody questions kinda way. Might have a two hour wait, her blood sugar levels could start dropping, it’ll all be fine, I’m sure. And there, before we knew it came the tow truck and with such a cute guy driving it. Not like that, just such another kind soul who with a slick deftness of hand guided the car backward, forwards, onto the ramp, up and onto the truck bed, is that what you call it? and tied it tight. We sat up in the cab with him, loving every minute, talking all things truckin’, HGV’s, vehicle weights … ‘how heavy is the heaviest SUV?’ I’d be asking him (it’s a Range Rover, no surprise there, 2.5 tons more or less), how he’s working towards his class 2 and class 1 licences to drive bad ass trucks to rescue and tow much bigger beasts, more challenging, more solutions based. We talked about some of the missions he’d been out on, the crashes he’s had to clear up, uff, I hadn’t thought of the crashes. And there he was sitting next to a sister who’d lost her brother to one and a mother who’d lost her son to one. A moment of quiet came over me, momentarily. I wondered if mum was thinking the same thing. He told us that the Tesla (yeah, let’s not go there on that one), that had been crushed beyond recognition had two child seats in the back, uff. Amazingly everyone had walked away. We got back onto towing double decker buses, driving HGVs down country lanes and the like, my dad Jim would have been so proud of me, he loves a good ‘anything about cars’ conversation, and yes I did mention Truckers on Ice, just for you dad haha.

After a miscommunication with the first garage we set off for another, had funny little interactions with a couple of other drivers along the way, one who’s car also just broke down in the middle of the road, ‘has ya clutch gone?’ I hollered out, and finally got to the next garage. There, I won’t tell you what happened next as me and another man pinched some of the gorgeous brown paper and string labels that were just sitting there on the counter, but I did ask if I could have some of the gorgeous A3 brown paper sheets that they had a pack off, ‘of course you can, two sheets?’  ‘Well three would be better’ big smile.

My mum has got left with a big fat bill to pay for her new clutch but as I told her, this afternoon has been fucking priceless. The people that we’ve encountered, the stories we’ve experienced, have shared, the joy that has filled our hearts, the kindness of people who paved our way, how their actions touched others just by talking about them, I’d say that’s money well spent, you can’t put a price on that, priceless, our afternoon was priceless.