Writing Workshop: Surprise

A while ago I said I would tell Josie about my fairy godmother (I can’t find the post where I said this in a reply, but I’m sure I did!) and I’m very pleased to find this week’s Writing Workshop has a prompt that will help me do that (well, very loosely)…

Whenever I am in serious trouble, my fairy godmother turns up to surprise me and to help me out. She tends to manifest as a kind and thoughtful old lady. Let me tell you about some of the times when she has stepped up.

I was sixteen or seventeen and my boyfriend was driving a friend home. It was a windy road and there was a skid and suddenly we were upside down and I was transported back to a night about ten years before when my dad had turned the car over on the way back from our Christmas visit to Wales. I was convinced we had gone over the Severn Bridge and were drowning (in fact, we’d taken a different route to drop off a hitchhiker and the drips I could feel were oil). But being upside down in a car again brought it all out. Out of the car, somehow, I sat on the verge and screamed and screamed. The next thing I knew an old lady was leading me back to her house and making me a cup of sweet tea. She offered the use of her phone and my boyfriend called his dad to come and get us (or possibly our friend called his mum to come and get us, I don’t really remember that bit well) and we were fine. The car had had it, but we were fine.

Around the same time, Jayne and I had borrowed Sasha’s bike (no idea why!) and decided to use it to cycle up to visit some boy. At one point, we came to the top of a hill and decided that it would make sense for one of us to ride and the other one to sit on the back (or was it the handlebars?). Of course, this didn’t work and we ended up crashing. Right outside an old lady’s house. Out she came and invited us in for (yes, you guessed it) a cup of tea. And she offered the use of her phone and Jayne called her dad to come and get us (I think – again the aftermath is blurry).

While at university and during an Easter vacation when I was supposed to be finishing my dissertation (I only had the damn conclusion left to right and then a final edit to do), I got really ill. All my housemates were off on holiday in exotic places, Chris was away in Washington and the only person available to help me out was my (very recent) ex. He did bring me some soup, though it was Heinz tomato soup and to this day I’m still not sure whether he just forgot that I really, really hate Heinz tomato soup or he remembered very well and was getting some revenge (which would be fair, of course). I couldn’t move – I spent pretty much the whole week lying in bed, incredibly feverish, crawling a few feet to the bathroom to throw up now and then and once crawling downstairs to get some juice. I lost a whole bunch of weight (Chris was shocked to see how gaunt I was when he got home), as I didn’t eat anything except half a bowl of Heinz tomato soup in a whole week. I couldn’t move enough to make it to the doctor’s surgery, which was about two minutes’ walk away. At the end of the week and finally on the mend I did make it to see the doctor, because I needed a note for being late with my dissertation. (This was incredibly annoying, because I’d been writing it for over a  year and had practically finished.) While there I had to get a prescription for my asthma medication, as well. Then I made my way to the chemist to get the prescription filled. The 10-minute walk took me half an hour because I was so weak. I stumbled into the chemist and took my prescription to the pharmacy counter. Obviously, I chose to wait, rather than come back later. There was a chair, but it was occupied already by an old lady. I asked the woman behind the counter if they had another chair I could sit on and she said ‘No’ then muttered quite loudly to her colleague ‘…clearly on drugs…’. The old lady stood up and gave me her chair, saying ‘You look like you’re about to collapse dear, you take it.’ The woman behind the counter then brought out a chair for the old lady to sit in.

OK. So, rather than proving the existence of fairy godmothers, this has probably just showed how nice old ladies can be. But, I’m sorry, I still believe that I have a fairy godmother out there, who helps out when I really need it.

Do you have a fairy godmother?

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