….or divine intervention…

You may recall, I recently did a post about coincidence/divine intervention – you may not have seen it yet and that’s ok but I have another example I want to share with you.

So picture the scene: Dearest Son has his first appointment at the orthodontist which is in a large town about 30-40 minutes away. I ALWAYS get lost when I have to go there. I can just about get to the ASDA (we don’t have one here) without incident and that’s it.

However, on the day in question, I was looking for a specific car park. Cue the stress. I don’t have sat nav or any of that fancy stuff so I looked it up on google maps on my laptop and took a series of photos showing the route. I felt pretty confident. I shouldn’t have.

So we set off in good time and got to the town with half and hour to spare. I know what you’re thinking: Sharon, that’s ages, what could possibly go wrong? Well if it was the Grand Prix and I was supposed to be doing laps, then nothing! Trouble is, I wasn’t meant to be doing laps and the clock was ticking. Oh, I should probably mention here that it was a really hot day and our car windows don’t work. Should I also tell you our car is leaking oil? Again.

I eventually came to the conclusion that, upon seeing me enter their town, they decided to hide the car park in question – so I went into one I’d passed a couple of times and was pretty sure I would get a space in. Feeling rather pleased that I’d found a space I skipped over to the ‘pay to park’ machine. I didn’t have coins (which I usually take), but all these machines take cards these days anyway. Except these ones.

There was a sticker on the machines saying the card thingy wasn’t working. It’s coins – or you can do it over the phone. Well, I had no coins so I rang the number. A robot started guiding me to set up an account – I had no other visible choice so I started the process.

Robot goes on to say I need to enter the reg number of my car – press the key that’s relevant to the letter. I press. If you want ‘A’ press 1, for ‘B’ it’s 2, and on and on it went. After 2 letters, it did a check with me: So far you have BLAH BLAH, if correct press 1. I didn’t have time for this crap. We still didn’t know exactly where we were or how long it would take to get to the place we needed.

I looked down, feeling the battle was lost, when I saw something shiny, albeit in dirt, catch my eye. I asked Dearest Son to investigate.

It was a £1 coin! Enough to give us 1 hour of parking. Just what I was needing! I hung up on the robot and triumphantly put the coin into the machine and got our ticket – well after trying to see what was on the screen through all the sun glare etc.

We had paid to park! Now all we had to do was find the way to the main street and the orthodontist. Luckily we are fast walkers and this is where my map photos paid off. The appointment was pretty quick and we were back at the car with time to spare before the ticket time had run out.

Now I know some of you – well, most of you, will say, ‘what a lucky coincidence’. Not me though! Yet again, I feel like I was helped in a situation where I really needed the help.

We won’t however, mention the £1 coins I found in a zipped section of my handbag when walking back to the car after the appointment. No, don’t mention them.