Lost keys, locked out, flat tyre, hurty leg and lots of kind village people!

Last weekend, Jonny went away to teach percussion to a drum corps (his hobby and his passion). He took the car, so we knew we had a weekend of travelling by foot, whatever we wanted to do. As it turned out, I had a rather bizarre weekend, where the kindness of strangers, meant I didn’t crack under the pressure of a trio of unfortunate events.

Bunny had FINALLY agreed (aged 7) to let me take the stabilisers off of her bicycle, so we went to the park so she could practice riding her bike like a big girl.

Whilst I was videoing her and taking photos (in true blogger style), the twins were happily playing, about five feet away from me. I thought to myself, “I really need to take the house keys away from Fluffy before she loses them”. As quickly as it fleeted through my brain, that thought left me. It wasn’t until an hour later, when we started walking home, that I realised I never took the keys back. And that Fluffy hadn’t had them in her squidgy little hand, for a really long time.

After retracing our steps, and triple checking underneath the buggy, I approached some parents in the park and asked if anyone had seen a bunch of keys. Within minutes, there were five adults and about fifteen children looking for our keys… for TWO HOURS. Those kind-hearted strangers stayed in the park all that time, scouring it up and down, kicking away piles of mown grass and pushing back stinging nettles with sticks. Eventually I knew I had to give up, but with nobody owning a spare key, my phone at home on charge, Jonny a three hour drive away (with the car) and no windows left open in the house, I was starting to panic. The twins needed clean nappies, we needed a drink and some dinner. Where would we sleep?

I tried to think where I would take the keys, if I’d found a set, and decided to leave my phone number at the local co-op. It was a long shot, but it was in the centre of the village and had the longest opening hours of any other shop over a weekend. The shop assistant looked at me as though it was my mind I had lost.

On the way back home, the tyre burst on our Mountain Buggy. I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it is to push a pushchair that heavy, with twins in it, with a tyre gone. Before I had time to wonder what else might go wrong, Bunny lost concentration, cycled into a hedge and went crashing to the pavement. There were tears galore, but after a few minutes cuddle, she was okay. I was now left, not only pushing a buggy with a flat tyre, to a house I couldn’t get into, but also carrying a bike and trying to soothe a daughter with a hurty leg. “Welcome to Motherhood”, I thought to myself, “Did you think it would always be easy?”

One of the Daddy’s in the park, who’d been helping us look for the keys, offered to help me get into my house. He took his children home and met me at my house with his van full of tools. Within minutes, this kind man, had chiselled the trim off my living room window and gently lifted out the double glazed pane. He climbed in, opened the patio door from the inside, and put the window back together. I was so lucky to have bumped into this guy and so grateful to him for giving up his afternoon to help me (don’t worry – I bought him a crate of beer to say thank you). He told me his own wife had also lost the house keys in the park before and having little children of his own, he couldn’t leave us stranded.

I was feeling very blessed to be living in a village with such helpful citizens. I know this certainly wouldn’t have happened where I lived before.

On Sunday, as I walked home from the supermarket, I got a phone call from the man at the co-op… another kind honest stranger had come to my rescue, and not only found my keys, but handed them in too. They must have had the same thoughts as me, about where to hand them in.

Having encountered so many selfless and considerate people over the weekend, I am now happier than ever, with our choice to move house and area codes.