My last post was on optimism. I guess this one kinda follows on from that. Through a combination of much good luck, my work as a nurse then as a midwife, and also from having a (tiny) bit of involvement in the charity sector, I’ve come to a world view that all is not lost for humanity. I know some might find this unreasonably optimistic, but hear me out… I’m not saying all is hunky dory, and yes, since you ask, I’m a bit terrified at the possibility that America will re-elect that odious creature (I can’t even acknowledge him by name).

Yet I’m not the only person who swears by the kindness of strangers. Every Saturday morning, on Radio 4 around 0930 there’s a segment where a listener thanks a stranger for an act of  altruism. Sometimes it’s a relatively small thing (but still very positively impactful), sometimes it’s literally heroic stuff. Either way, it never makes the headlines or even our social media feeds. Pretty easy to overlook amidst the deluge of bad news stories that do. But these stories always warm the cockles of my heart.

Over the years countless people have come to my rescue in many different ways. One of my earliest encounter with a good samaritan was when a kind stranger brought my wallet back to my home when it had fallen out of my coat pocket on my way back from school. I can’t have had much in it, probably not even a bank card but it meant the world to me that someone would go out of their way to do that. You’d think that would be the only time I’ve had my carelessly dropped wallet returned to me, but amazingly, it happened again years later. I’d done the classic booboo of putting my handbag on the car roof while focusing intently on strapping a small child into its car seat. I’d probably then turned my attention to folding the pram, and I suppose my car key was in my pocket. My phone must also have been in my pocket because I’d barely arrived at my destination when it rang. It was the Blood Donation people, which puzzled me, because they don’t usually call you… even now, with my 60 + donations (see how I snuck that in? Talking about the kindness of strangers…) I don’t get calls from them! They informed me that the local firestation had my wallet. Now I was utterly confused. Firemen? Blood banks? My wallet? I finally twigged that I was indeed missing a handbag! It eventually transpired that a kind motorist had seen said bag fall from the car roof and had somehow (one assumes very bravely) stopped in the road, picked it up, and taken it to the firestation where they’d seen my blood donation card (see, it does pay more than biscuits to give blood; if you haven’t already, go do that, I’m a midwife and I cannot overemphasise how life saving it is) and got them to call me. All this before I’d even realised what a dopey placenta-brain I’d been! Man, I should really write to Radio four’s Saturday Live about this.

Life with small kids was fairly often punctuated by small acts of kindness by strangers. I can’t count how many lovely strangers helped me get my various prams up and down stairs in the tube. Flying with kids is a mission (yes, I know. First. World. Problem) but I’ll never forget this one gentleman who spent most of the flight chanting ‘this little piggy’ to a one-year-old  Only Daughter who was so  mesmerised she forgot she was intolerably strapped to my laps.

More recently, I was cycling to work in the drizzling rain and my chain came off. Now I should stress that normally I can fix this. I can’t change a tyre (would be a very useful skill but I just cannot be arsed!) In fact, this happened to me while I was doing a triathlon (I cannot explain why I was doing a triathlon, I dislike running and I detest cold water swimming) but to make a stupid idea worse, my chain came off.  I have no clue why chains sometimes do this (please refrain from explaining this in terms of gear to cog shenanigans, it’s all gobbledegook to me!) . One minute you’re fine, and the next the chain is hanging uselessly and you are no longer moving. Nobody stopped to help. But that would have been beyond heroic because come on,  it’s a race!) Anyway, I somehow figured it out and finished the race. But on the morning in question, that chain was bewitched. It just wouldn’t straighten itself out. And then a kind magician appeared (out of nowhere…) and unjinxed the chain which untangled itself meekly as if it knew resistance was futile… well, that’s how it looked to me! Small act you might say, and you might be right but… I didn’t have to walk the rest of the way to work in the rain, and as an added bonus, I wasn’t late.

Another unexplained and mysterious act of kindness involved a broken coffee machine. Bear with me, it’s a good story! I don’t just love coffee, I’m a wee bit dependent on it. I don’t even bother to pretend otherwise. So I have a semi decent machine (one of the pod ones which make yummy coffee in an instant, and no, I don’t feel guilty enough about the carbon footprint) which makes mornings that little bit less awful because its good to wake up and smell the coffee, anyway,  I digress… my machine stopped working. No warning. Properly kaput. Obviously it was fresh out of warranty, I checked. I wrote to the manufacturer to see if there was any chance it could be fixed because I quite like the idea of giving gadgets a second chance at life. They said no. I wasn’t shocked.  In fact, having anticipated this response,  and because the situation was quickly becoming desperate (turns out instant coffee granules, which used to be hunky dory until my taste buds got spoiled, weren’t hitting the spot any more) so I’d already ordered a replacement. As a poor substitute to getting the broken machine repaired,  I’d taken it to a branch of Curry’s (they take small broken electrical appliances and recycle them, you’re welcome!) And I thought that was the end of that. But… a couple of weeks later, I get a parcel. I kid you not: it was my coffee machine.  But repaired! Now I know these machines have serial numbers, and I admit the possibility that I may have registered mine. That could explain the how.  But the only explanation for the why? Human kindness.  That or magic. I took it to work where it dutifully keeps serving fragrant and life saving, magic-imbued coffee!

I’m not proud of this but I have, on very few occasions, lost track of a child of mine. The thing nobody tells you about having more than one child, is that one pair of eyes is woefully inadequate. In a playground situation your kids are, at any given moment, at opposite ends of the enclosure. So long as it IS an enclosure, you’re kind of OK. But sometimes you’re hurrying to an eye appointment in a busy shopping centre with 3 kids, say, and you get to the opticians where you stop, but, as an example, your Middle Child keeps going. The ten minutes that follow are deeply unpleasant and seemingly endless, but a kind stranger scoops up the clearly freaked out child and makes contact with the patrolling security… reunion ensues. The optician gets rebooked!

On a different note, I’ve had the immense privilege of visiting many charities over the years. These organisations and the frankly awesome people who run them are always lovely reminders that there is hope. People providing succour, fighting injustice, alleviating suffering, donating their time, energy and their skills to benefit strangers in need. Proper unsung heroes.

I can hardly finish this post without a huge shout out to all the health care professionals.  Yes, I know we’re paid to be lovely caring strangers so in a way it doesn’t count. But… so many of my amazing colleagues go that extra mile, bending over backwards to provide care above and beyond their pay grade. Last Christmas Eve, for example, one of our mothers that I’d been looking after, had been waiting all day (nil by mouth, thus properly starving) for her cesarean but more urgent cases kept bumping  her down the list. The consultant on duty, who’d had a very busy day, could easily have left it to the night staff. She knew that if she started at 7pm, she had zero hope of leaving on time. (Neither did I as an aside, nor the theatre team for that matter, or the anaesthetist….) but she did it anyway. She was right, obviously  and I don’t think a single person begrudged that unpaid Christmas Eve overtime.

So you see, I might not be so deludedly optimistic after all! The evidence is there if we choose to look. We should all strive to look. Because people are copycats; people see, people do. Let’s all watch kittens and puppies and people being human kind. And maybe give blood..?