Guardian angel...

I'm sure that there are times when we all feel that we have a guardian angel.

I'm equally sure that there are times when we all feel that we don't.

Once when I was a young man living in Birmingham, getting up early after working late, rushing out of the house bleary-eyed after a late night freelancing, running down the gulley, scarf flapping, floundering across the road and onto the busy dual carriageway, my guardian angel appeared.

Of course I never saw him/her. But I felt the rush of wings and the pull of hands as I was lifted bodily from the road and pulled back three feet to avoid the bus that I'd almost blundered into in my haste to reach the bus stop.

It must have been the candlelit carol concert from the night before along the Walsall Road at a church I can't remember the name of, but one moment I was in front of the bus as it bore down on me like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a speeding car, the next I felt the bus pass, the wind of its passing pulling the dog-tooth cap from my head and tumbling it along the gutter.

BLAHHHHHHHHHH. From the bus drivers horn. A scowl on his face as he passed full and not ever intending to stop.

I never bothered to pick up my cap. I just caught the next bus shaking.