God is Good!

Yesterday we travelled down from Cambridgeshire to London. We made a long stop on the way at a National Trust house, which I’ll write about in another post.
Our trip into London was both what we expected and more than we expected. We haven’t really driven in the capital much, apart from our trip to Rochester, and this time we were actually having to go through areas that were very built-up and traffic-heavy. So it was stop-start, brake-accelerate, in and out of first and second gear (we could well do with an automatic) and in general rather stressful (though to give me a modicum of credit, I kept my cool - and I wasn’t even driving!)
The trip took far longer than our poor little Sat Nav had estimated at the beginning, because there were so many blockages and hold-ups (a normal London day, it seems). In the end, we were about five to ten minutes from our destination when Celia suddenly yelled that the brake had given up the ghost (well, she communicated that without words almost), grabbed the handbrake and we swerved to the side of the road. Fortunately we weren’t going fast, so it wasn’t a completely awful moment. We held fire for about ten minutes, while I suggested that perhaps with all the braking we’d been doing the brakes had overheated and given up temporarily. Celia gave things another go, tentatively, when we thought it might be safe, but they were still kaput.
Frazzlement.
We looked up the number of the AA on the Net: our little mobile connect friend was working wonderfully at full speed, as has done so everywhere in London. There was a number to ring for mobile phones, so we tried that. After some discussion as to who we were and why we should be ringing them, we were informed that there was no reciprocal agreement between the UK and NZ, as we’d been informed, and that just to get someone to come out would cost us £99! To join, according to the friendly lady, would cost even more. Meanwhile Celia was looking at the AA page on the Net where there was no indication that the price was anything like that. In the end we said we’d think about it.
By this time I was needing to go to the loo rather desperately (it’s one of the hazards of travelling) and because I’d seen a boy talking to the a man in the house we were parked outside, and because the bloke had seemed friendly enough, I thought I’d try and see if he’d let me use his toilet.
He was extremely friendly, and when I’d done my bit, he asked what the problem was with our car. I explained. He said, just give me a minute to get the kids in bed, and I’ll come and see if I can do anything. While we waited he must talked to his wife because she appeared and suggested we come in and have a cup of tea and that she was just ringing her Bank who covered her family for roadside mishaps to see if they would help us.
Amazingly that was fine: as long as she was with us when the RAC driver arrived, we’d be covered. Isn’t that extraordinary? We sat in the couple’s front room and talked about who they were and who we were (he’s a publisher of little children’s books - Little Tiger Press) and apart from the fact that we were still feeling rather frazzled by the incident, it couldn’t have been a more pleasant experience. (We’d called to the place we were going to, to tell them we might be running late - and they rang back suggesting a similar approach to the problem!)
But the two virtual strangers were like a couple of angels sent from heaven. Bless ‘em, as they say a lot over here.
Anyway the RAC man arrived, and of course the brakes were fine. No oil on the road, no obvious problems except that the brake fluid was hot. He recommended we get the car to a garage in the morning and have the fluid flushed and changed. And then followed us all the way to where we were staying for the night to make sure we got there safely. And we got there at the time we were supposed to!
This morning we went to the garage our overnight hosts recommended and they did the job within an hour! We thought we might be looking at a matter of days. Since then, we’ve driven twice through London traffic with the same stop-start issues, and the brakes have held.
Good old God.