So things turned out slightly unexpectedly for me last week, as they can easily do, writes Lucy Stephens.
A bit of snow and a dodgy clutch pedal meant my carefully timetabled day on Tuesday went somewhat awry. Well, you know what they say about best laid plans.
I’d been driving to pick my daughter up from school when all of a sudden, things weren’t going so well behind the wheel.
Drawing up to a busy junction, the gear stick suddenly refused to work. Then I stalled. About 10 times. The battery seemed to be going flat. The clutch pedal was jammed tight to the floor. It was time to put the hazards on and phone for help.
But do you know what? SO many people, seeing my predicament, offered to help.
I’d say around one in every two drivers who drew up alongside me in their cars wound down their windows and asked if I was OK and if there was anything they could do.
And those who didn’t were probably just trying to get out of the way and not make the situation even worse than it already was.
After about ten minutes a chap came up and commandeered the help of three men in the van behind, who – without any drama or fuss – pushed me round the corner to the safety of a snowy verge.
“Release the handbrake and steer to the left,” they said. (At which point I thought: ‘I really should have known that’.)
I contacted my rescue provider of choice online and settled down to wait for assistance.
Rather unfortunately, due to the fact the battery appeared to be going flat, my window was stuck very much in the wound down position.
Which did make the ice cold conditions perhaps slightly harder to deal with than they otherwise would have been.
I kicked myself for having forgotten my phone charger and not worn better shoes. The ones with holes in them proved very impractical when trudging outside in the snow.
But stuck on that snowy verge (for what turned out to be five and a half hours) the offers of help, amazingly, kept on coming.
The chap who had got people to push me to safety was first to arrive.
“Are you alright? Can I bring you a cup of tea?” he said. “I’d love to make you a cup of tea. Please let me.”
Well – it was an offer I couldn’t refuse! He appeared about ten minutes later with not just a cup of tea (in a special Christmas themed takeaway cup) but a half packet of custard creams and a hot water bottle with knitted sheep cover!
“My wife insisted I bring you this,” he said, adding: “Sorry, we ate all the Ginger Nuts.”
About 20 minutes later, another couple pulled over. They were on their way shopping.
“Can we help you?” they said. “Bring you anything from the shop? Would you like a lift home?”
And on their way back from the shops, they stopped again and asked if my assistance was coming soon.
As the waiting time for my road rescuers grew longer, I phoned a friend to come and help. She arrived with torch, more tea, a phone battery and, perhaps best of all, a car with the ability to close the windows.
What’s the point of telling you all this?
Well, it’s this: those of us who used to work on newspapers often used to be told: “Why don’t you ever report on something positive? Why is news always negative? You never report on the good things we do.”
As a reporter at the time, I’d often baulk at words like these. They weren’t really true – we did report on plenty of good things.
But I could understand a lot of the frustration that led to the comments being made. It’s probably fair to say that a ‘knocking’ story – as we call it in the trade – would more likely to be used on the front pages than a gentle, positive one.
Bad news, unfortunately, does attract attention more. Because it’s different. It’s not what you expect the world to be like. ‘Things ticking along nicely’ isn’t really news, unfortunately. But ‘bad news up at the mill’, sadly, is.
That’s why it’s such a pleasure to have moved into the world of PR because we get to tell the world about all the good work done by the companies and charities we represent. How and why a company boss has decided to give to charity. Why normal people are deciding to do something extraordinary for a cause close to their hearts.
I think that social media in particular (despite its issues) is a great forum for highlighting simple acts of kindness: nothing earth-shattering, but warm-hearted news celebrating money raised from bake sales and how Mavis from accounts got very wet on her charity bike ride.
I might not see again those people who were so kind and helpful to me on that cold afternoon.
But through the medium of LinkedIn I can at least tell you about it.
PS, I ate all the custard creams.
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