Two wrongs make a right

By making a left

In yesterday’s Part 6 of my mother’s mémoire, she recounts how she met my dad, at a Mess Dance at his R.A.F. station in St Mawgan, Cornwall. Today is Sunday, and so I’d like to reflect on that encounter in terms of destiny, the hand of God, and other inexplicable explanations for things that come to pass.

Whilst on holiday in Cornwall with three girlfriends in a car owned by the father of one of the girls, my mum and her friends were invited to a Friday Mess Dance by the merest of chances, by Taffy, a drunk Welshman who was an airman stationed at St Mawgan. It was at that dance that my father and mother met. Afterwards they arranged to meet the next evening, albeit with chaperones—Jimmy, a pal of my dad’s, and Nancy, the girl whose car they were holidaying in. On the Sunday the girls were scheduled to move on to Torquay. But this had to be cancelled, because on that Saturday, Jimmy damaged Nancy’s car.

The two boys arrived in Jimmy’s Morris 10, and were so impressed by Nancy’s Austin 12, they opted to go in it to Padstow, with Jimmy, asking if he could drive Nancy’s posh Austin automobile. As luck would have it, he scraped the car on a sharp corner upon entering Padstow. In order not to risk the tyre with the dented fender, the girls decided that they would stay put in Newquay to have the car repaired, which meant they had to extend their stay there for five days.

Five days of waiting for a repair. And five days for getting to know the local airmen. One might say that a string of coincidences led to the opportunity of my parents getting better acquainted. But, Nancy’s car was still damaged, and one cannot set the joy of one’s new friendships against the material loss of another friend, especially since Nancy had borrowed the car from her father.

On the day after the night in which Jimmy had scraped the Austin, Nancy’s father and mother were invited to go for a run in the country back in Scotland, with friends of theirs who had just bought a new car. At one point, Nancy’s father took the wheel, and managed to scrape his friend’s brand new car on a bridge. Thus was the circle of coincidence completed.

The drunk Welshman invited the girls to the dance, but was at the dance with his own fiancée. Ahem. It was there that my mum met my dad. It might have been a fleeting acquaintance, but for Jimmy scraping Nancy’s car. And Nancy would have had to eat humble pie with her father, had her father not just scraped a friend’s car himself.

Two wrongs? One right. All because of a left turn into Padstow.