Stop!

   On Good Friday 6^th April 2007 at 3:15pm, I was driving home from work, through Coryton in Essex.  I'd agreed to work that morning because If I don’t work I don’t get paid; I'd been temping at the oil refinery for nearly three years.  So, there I was, at the tail end of a ten-hour shift, heading home to my wife and a hot home cooked meal.  And to get some real work done, for my sins I’m a writer.  Not a successful one, not a well published one, but a writer nonetheless.

  I was multi-tasking, as I drove down a quiet country lane, at thirty miles an hour. Listening to the annual Easter service on Radio 4, and mulling over the plot of a short story that had been marinating in my mind for several days.  It was a sunny but bracing spring afternoon, as I approached a small group of cottages on my left.  I glanced in my rear-view mirror and noticed a white van, rapidly narrowing the gap between us. 

  A full choir of voices, bass’s, tenor’s and soprano’s escaped through the speakers of my car stereo.  The choral voices soared to a crescendo angelic and harmonious.  Beautiful…

  “Stop!” 

  My foot hit the brake.  There was a screech of tyres as the van skidded into the back of me, shaking my car as it slammed into my rear bumper.  At that precise moment three young children ran out, from a concealed alley, giggling and shouting. They ran straight into the road in front of my stationary car.  Their looks of horror were replaced with surprise, as they realized, I was not going to run them down.

 The voice that had boomed from my radio, so commanding and insistent, had saved their young lives and they would never even know it.   The music continued unabated and it occurred to me that had I not stopped I would have passed the spot an instant before the kids appeared.

  The van driver came up to my half-open window. He looked dazed.  “Thanks to your quick thinking, those kids are still alive,” he said.  “If you’d driven by I would have been unable to stop.  They would be lying in the road now, badly injured or dying.  I don’t know what to say,” he shook my hand vigorously; “I’ve never seen reflexes like that.”   His emotions played on his face, for all to see, as the kids ran back into the alley.  Somebody behind the van leaned impatiently on his horn.  We both ignored it.       I got out of my car to inspect my rear end. “No real damage!” I said straightening the bent bumper. “Let’s put it down to our mutual good fortune eh?”  I patted him on the back, and smiled reassuringly before getting back into my car and carefully driving off.

.-…-.

  Half an hour later, I was at home.  I switched on my laptop and booted up the internet.  www.bbc.co.uk and reprised the concert I’d been listening to in the car.  I waited expectantly, but there was no shout, nothing!   I played it again and again.  

“Not your usual music repertoire,” said June.

   I told her what had happened.  She pondered for a while.  “Maybe you heard somebody in the alley. Maybe they realized the kids might be in danger and called to warn them?”

  “You’re probably right,” I said, turning back to my laptop, “we can’t expect two miracles in one day.”

  She smiled, “something tells me I shouldn’t be asking...”

  “The boss agreed to pay me time-and-a-half for working today since it's Good Friday,” I said.

  “Don’t get too embroiled with that blog of yours Len, dinner is almost ready…”