Some 30 or so years ago, when I was a young and foolhardy teen, I rashly decided to hitch hike from my home in Birmingham to a friend’s in Bristol in the middle of winter. I had miscalculated the weather and embarked on my journey at the onset of what turned into a massive snow blizzard.
After a few hours of soulless hitchhiking, I was in trouble. It was getting late and I was stranded in the middle of nowhere. Few cars were on the roads and the ones that were weren’t stopping. I was freezing cold and the storm was relentless. Thick snow was on the ground and getting deeper by the hour and a horizontal gale of blinding white sleet was lashing down, cutting through me like a knife, soaking me to the skin and making visibility almost impossible. There was no way i was going to make it to Bristol that night. I had to find some kind of shelter.
Somehow I found a service station and headed for the toilet in an attempt to get out of the weather, dry some clothes and warm up a bit under the hand driers. So there I was, 2.00 clock in the morning, half naked, my soaking wet clothes hanging from various toilet stalls or under the hand driers, as I tried desperately to stave off hyperthermia and make it through the night.
Then I saw the beam of a flashlight at the doorway.
It was the security guard on his rounds. He stood staring silently at me as I looked sheepishly back at him. I prayed he wasn’t going to throw me out into the snow. If he did, I honestly thought i could die that night. His expression was impossible to read as he stared at me for what seemed the longest time. ” I will be back in ten minutes” he said, then turned and left.
Fully expecting to be thrown out into the cold cold night, I packed up my stuff and waited for him to come back and decide my fate. When he returned, I threw my bag over my shoulder and grimly resigned myself to heading back into the snow. “Where do you think you are going? The security guard asked.
“Oh no, he’s going to prosecute me for trespassing or something”, I thought, and I started to mumble an apology as I headed for the door.
Stone faced, he stood in front of me and held up a hand. “You’re going nowhere son”. He said. “Follow me.” He promptly turned on his heel and walked out of the bathroom. I had nothing to lose. I figured the worst that could happen is that I end up spending a few hours locked in a warm police cell, which, given the weather outside, really wasn’t an entirely unappealing prospect.. So, I followed him out.
He led me into the service station and up some stairs and along a corridor and through a few doors, then, to my surprise, he took me to a part of the service station that had been closed off from the rest of the building with big wooden shutters. Reaching for a bunch of keys on his belt, he unlocked a door which opened up to a comfortably carpeted and, most importantly, warm, large empty room. Pointing to a corner of the room he told me I could put my sleeping bag down and spend the night. He briefly left then returned holding a cup of coffee and a sandwich and told me to keep quiet and leave before the morning rush hour otherwise he would get into trouble.
That morning, when I awoke, he was nowhere to be found so I never got the chance to thank him. I quietly packed up my things and hit the road. He quite probably saved my life that night.
Over 30 years ago, that security guard did something basic, decent and human for a complete stranger who was in trouble. He did it out of the goodness of his heart. He didn’t have to do that. He could have been a jobsworth and chucked me out. He was perfectly within his rights to throw that scruffy kid messing up his nice clean bathroom into the snow, in fact he was probably obliged as part of his duties to do exactly that; but he didn’t, he followed his conscience, he behaved like a compassionate human being and he did the right thing.
and the result of his actions is that I am still telling the story today, more than 30 years later. I will never meet him again of course, nor him me, our paths crossed but once on that bitterly cold night all those years ago, but its nice to think that his small act of kindness has led him to be remembered fondly all these years later.
Notes From Nowhere 