Good people in the world

 

We've lived in our current house about 20 years now, and it's on one of those architectural nightmare developments where some simpleton with far too many letters after his or her name designed the place to retain the look and feel of its previous role (in this case a brewery). So there's lots of wrought iron metalwork around and the fences around our house are huge iron bars that are attached to the actual wall / structure of the house. 

Since we moved in I've always waited for the day that someone would hit those railings, taking our wall with 'em and that day came earlier on in the week when a brick truck went onto the pavement to parallel park in the maintenance space just outside, seeing the bush that grows around our railings but not the railing itself. I was working from home at the time and heard a massive "CRUNCH" and immediately ran out of the house, shouting and swearing at the driver and asking what the fuck had happened? 

The driver, understandably, was not happy about being sworn at (and I wasn't happy that I lost my temper like that either but be honest, what would you have done if a truck hit your house?)

My anxiety kicked in as the railings were pretty much wrecked. Thankfully the truck was moving in the opposite direction, ie not backing ONTO the railings so it just yanked the railing fittings out of the wall (fairly cleanly) and bent the middle supporting post a bit. Still not something I could repair myself but it turned out that the poor brick truck driver was that rare thing - a good person, who was anxious to make amends and wanted to settle things without dragging greedy insurance companies or busybody officials into what was essentially an accident where liability was quickly admitted (on his part, it's not like I could have moved my house out of the way to avoid him!!)

So names have been changed to protect the innocent, we'll call the guy Pete just for the sake of picking a name out of the air. I took Pete's details, took photos of the scene, took the truck's numberplate and took a couple of extra photos to try and record as close to the time as possible. Pete promised that he would come back and fix the railings before the weekend and I gave him my details to keep in touch. 

I heard nothing for a couple of days. I got a hard time from my wife who suggested I sent him a friendly email just to point out that the damage was much worse than we first thought (again thankfully just to the railings and not the house, which could've been a nightmare). He responded by phone more or less instantly, and once again promised to come back and fix things and put them back to exactly how they were before the accident. 

I know what you're thinking. "You sucker! You should've thrown the book at him!" or "You got diddled, you'll never hear from him again" (which is pretty much what everyone else thought about the incident) but I was working from home again yesterday when once again I heard a terrific CRUNCH from outside, and once again I leapt up from my desk to run outside in my stockinged feet to shout at whatever or whoever had done it AGAIN. Surely the same thing couldn't happen to the same person in the same week? What the fuck was going on? 

BUT it was actually Pete who was pushing the bent / dislodged post with his van to straighten it out, while another guy held the railing in place (so the crunch was actually the back sill of his van, not my house!) Within the space of 30 minutes (and with a cuppa provided by me, and a helping hand to hold things while fittings were reattached) the railings were indeed back to how they were before. Better in fact because Pete had brought along some proper cavity wall fixings and done the whole job better than the original builders. 

I got to know Pete a little over the course of those 30 minutes and by the end we were laughing and joking. I like to think I'm a nice person. Opinions may vary, but the one thing I hate more than anything else is a fight or a confrontation and it could so easily have gone that way. "Look at us now, compared to how we were when we first met!" he said, and that struck me harder than his brick truck hit my fence - that he was exactly right, and that settling things amicably was far better than standing there shouting at each other or threatening legal action, or worse - a physical fight which I would have lost (as I'm absolutely crap in a fight! Just don't pick me for your team in a Zombie Apocalypse as I'm also a terrible shot). 

I lost a couple of nights sleep to this after the incident but last night I slept pretty well, knowing that there are still good people out there in the world (and resting easy that I wouldn't have to go through some hideous process to get the house back to normal). I hope Pete did too and I hope his future dreams of moving down to Devon also bear fruit (I bet they will). 

Thanks Pete, you restored my fence and my faith in humanity.