It was a dark and stormy night ...

Last night was one of those nights when I ran temporarily 'out of luck'. I went down to the garage as usual to set off for a church prayer meeting (makes me sound pious I know - more on that later), jumped in the car and turned the key, but the usual thing didn't happened. It just groaned and clicked and did nothing, so I jiggled the key around, made sure nothing had been left on, which it hadn't, and tried again, and then again. It did eventually start up and so I kind of shrugged and set off. I did know this was risky if the battery was failing but took a chance and thought (hoped!) going for a drive might fix the problem.

No so. I came out of the prayer meeting at around 9:30, walked to the car (which was a fair way off because weeknights around there it's car-parking madness) and hoped for the best, but nothing could bring Bertie to life. So I gave up and called the NRMA, where the accented lady kept me on the phone for ages, running up to the corner to find the name of the nearest intersection, spelling "Fitzroy Street" for about five minutes, running back to the car to confirm the number plate and updating the registration etc, before finishing what had to be done to send somebody out. There wasn't much point going back to the church by this time, because that was all over, so I wandered up the street to a 711, in enough need of a drink of something that I didn't care about wandering about, then went and sat in the car, which wouldn't let me have either light or music.

But it actually wasn't too bad. The guy arrived reasonably quickly (after them telling me it could be 90 minutes so I was preparing for a snooze) with a new battery at the ready, fitted it and gave me new terminals and all on the spot, for no cost other than the battery and terminals. Then the second he finished it started bucketting down rain, so we stood under the boot door of his van sorting out payment, while the rain splashed all about, he telling me I "timed it well", while I was rather more thankful for his timing. I ended up pulling out of there about an hour after I'd left the meeting.

But yes, every two months church has a prayer meeting, and to make it easy for people to get there they usually don't run Connect Groups (bible study groups) in that week (so I am really not so pious). There are a few songs, then some novel way of breaking up into groups, with the night being organised by a different Connect Group each time, for prayer. It was a good time (except for the ending).