God Whispers

Our New Zealand holiday sparkled with miracles, many involving our bright orange Vauxhall, Amazing Gracie. We were puttering along happily when Gracie made a strange groaning sound. Then stopped. Nobody said anything. We all prayed silently, desperately. How many more breakdowns could this old car survive? The boys got out and managed to open the bonnet and peer in. Even Alan was mystified. “Look, there’s a garage just down the road.” Peter tried hard to sound cheerful. “I’ll see if they can fix it.” And off he went. Soon after, he arrived back with a mechanic. The mechanic poked around under the bonnet while the boys looked on. “Sorry, Mate,” the mechanic said. “It needs a new part. Well, an old new part actually.” “Not a problem,” Peter told him. “We’ll buy it if you can fix it.” The mechanic cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. You don’t realise. This is a very old car. They don’t make these parts any more. We haven’t got any.” “You mean . . .?”

"What happened to our holiday?" Jenny sighed, fighting tears.  Cold, soggy tent material swished over her face as we lay in our little tent in the (rainy) Bay of Islands. I frowned into the darkness. Jenny was a diabetic and had health problems to cope with.  What was going on with our holiday? Our New Zealand holiday had begun in Auckland  - a sunny, blue-skied time. We slept on comfy beds and were treated to wonderful home-cooked meals. As soon as we'd collected our luggage at the airport, we’d established that we could not hitch around the two islands. Our knees buckled as we wobbled across the airport lounge with the heavy metal-framed packs on our backs.We barely made it across the room!     So we bought a car – a 1949 bright orange Vauxhall, for a mere $120 between five of us (1976, mind you).   Consequently we called it Amazing Gracie. Little did we know how often that car would earn its name!  Photo from Pixabay Gracie puttered all the w