During my fifty years of life I felt that God was watching over me. All those childhood diseases were declared as potentially fatal but weren’t. As a very young boy, while I was playing in the garden, a joyrider lost control of his huge American Sedan and smashed it straight into our garden, missing me by just two feet.
As a young teenager, through my own stupidity and arrogance, I sailed into a storm in a sailing dinghy, I capsized and should have been smashed into smithereens, along with my boat, against the island I tried to sail around, or at the very least have been lost at sea. But somehow, in a window of calmer winds and swell coinciding together, I managed to find the strength to right my boat and sail back to safety.
While on a mountain bike and showing off to a girl I fancied, as we descended back to sea level, I failed to see the hairpin bend, hit the fence at quite some speed and was catapulted over the handlebars into what could have been a fatal drop onto the rocks in the sea swirling tens of feet below. I landed in a blackthorn hedge. It was painful and I was pulling blackthorns out of my backside, back and thighs for weeks afterwards. But the hedge held and saved my life.
Having saved the life of the woman on the Corsican mountains, on the night of rest in the shelter we took her to, the snow had thawed then refrozen on the mountain. We made the decision to continue in these treacherous conditions. We hit a particularly icy spot and the expedition leader lent me a walking pole to assist my traverse of this path. I slipped on some ice and was sent on a slide towards certain death down the ice towards a drop of many hundreds of feet. My waterproof trousers were ripped from my legs, and I couldn’t get my hands or boots into the ice as I slipped at speed towards certain death. I heard a voice say clearly “Use your pole” and, remembering I had a walking pole tethered to my arm, I managed to, somehow, get it off my arm, into my hands, and to dig it hard into the ice to slow my descent. I eventually came to a halt just feet from the drop and managed to slowly, very, very slowly, and rather shakily, dig footsteps and handholds into the ice to work my way back up to the team to finish that walk.
There were several times when on operational tours in which intelligence had stated clearly that the enemy were intending to attack such a place. Several times in which I had been selected to take my team to the said place to foil the attack. Several times in which the enemy then went to somewhere completely different to launch their attack leaving me and my team untouched. No matter how many patrols I undertook in enemy territory my team was never taken on.
During the tour with the USMC in Afghanistan in which I launched my KLE/influence campaign; with the full colonels busy planning for the battle to retake Northern Helmand – where they would routinely escort their General on these engagements – I was finally allowed to escort their general. During that meeting, as the Taliban fighters trickled in, I found myself outnumbered and outgunned by the Taliban in an influence meeting of the father of a key leader in the key leader’s house. We had secured the Pashtun guarantee of ‘safe passage’ called ‘Pashtunwali’ but here, in this meeting, I was outnumbered and outgunned by the Taliban in a Taliban house – while sitting next to the man who would have secured them more media time and negotiation potential as a hostage than perhaps any other – the GOC of the IIMEF USMC. They must have been sorely tempted but, once the meeting was complete, they were true to their word and let us go. Despite the clear and present danger the general didn’t flinch. He kept on with the meeting, selling the deception plan with great valour. To say that I was nervous during this meeting would be an understatement.
After becoming homeless on leaving my house in Doune, while walking my dog down a street I rarely walked, I bumped into an acquaintance from Doune who had long ago moved to Dumfries. His mother had recently died. He had just finished emptying his mother’s flat. He saw me, grabbed me by the hand, looked me in the eyes and said, “Archie my mother’s just passed and I need somebody to help me keep my flat in Doune going, so if you know of anyone in Doune who needs somewhere to stay, tell them to get in touch.” He offered me a card. I promised him that I would keep my ear to the ground. He got in his car and started to drive away. At that moment, my head, grinding so slowly because of my treatment, sparked to life and I suddenly realised that his flat was meant for me. I started to run up the quiet road shouting after his car and waving my arms. He stopped, put on his four ways and stepped out of the car while I shouted, “Flat, your flat!” He looked at his tyres then realised that I was talking about his flat. I told him my story and he said I could stay as long as I payed the council tax and bills. Later he offered to sell it to me and reduced the price to encourage somebody to give me a mortgage. I was no longer homeless.
Many will say that these events are all coincidences. Perhaps they are. Certainly I keep praying to keep the happy coincidences happening.