I HAD a run-in with the ‘Christmas spirit’ and came away dismayed as well as delighted.

After Oxford’s Christmas Light Festival and lighting up the Christmas decorations, I was full of good cheer and raced up to Chipping Norton for a festive dinner with some artist friends which raised my spirits even higher.

They were celebrating an Oxfordshire Craft Guild show at the Chipping Norton Town Hall. This year it happens on December 4 to December 7.

During the meal a pea soup fog descended on Chippy and I decided to drive home to Oxford the long way and use the M40 motorway instead of the winding A44 through Woodstock. I thought the motorway would be the straighter and safer route.

I was so caught up in the excitement of the day that I didn’t notice my petrol gauge was barely off the empty mark.

By the time I got to the Cherwell Valley Service Station, the last place to get petrol before joining the motorway, I twigged but decided I would have enough petrol to get home. It was the wrong decision.

Halfway to Oxford, the engine cut out. It was midnight, and the mist was spitting with the force of some unseen big cat hissing, and the fog was grabbing the landscape like a cheeky chappie with a new bird on the beach at Brighton.

I felt caught. And yet, I still had this seasonal optimism that things were going to get better.

I bundled up warm in my olive drab army greatcoat, left the car lights on, stood in front of them on the hard shoulder so oncoming drivers could see me and started to flag them down. Someone must have a spare can of petrol in the boot.

After half an hour the penny dropped. Nobody was going to stop.

I had watched and waved to 356 cars, lorries, vehicle transporters and buses and none of them showed even a flicker of the Christmas spirit…except one.

At long last a driver put on the indicator and pulled off the motorway about quarter of a mile from my car. I ran after it.

Then as I approached I thought ‘I hope this person is going to be a good guy because he could be a baddie.’ What would I do if my saviour turned out to be carrying a knife? Was I running towards help or hell?

My grasp of the ‘Christmas spirit’ was pretty tenuous at this stage, but I put on a good face and put my hand out to the man who had stopped.

I couldn’t make out his features very well because it was dark and midnight but I could see the whites of his eyes and they had a twinkle.

He didn’t have any petrol, but told me to get in his car and warm up, and we talked about what was the best way out of this problem I found myself in. Then we discussed the reason why he had stopped, when so many others wouldn’t. I asked him straight out why he decided to help me.

He had a wonderful, open approach and talked about the fact that he could have been the one to run out of petrol and I could have been speeding by…would I have stopped?

It was a good question, because if there really is anything like the ‘Christmas spirit’ it’s not just a warm glow inside when you are safe and secure, it’s a hand out to help people who are vulnerable when it is not obviously in your own best interests.

We both agreed that there wasn’t much of it about these days.

Suddenly another hand entered the scene, a tightfisted hand that rattled the window on my side of the car.

Startled, I opened it to find an officer from the Highways Agency asking if we were all right. He had come to offer help.

I said goodbye to the Good Samaritan and walked back to my car with the officer who asked me if I had been flagging down cars.

I said yes, of course, that’s why this man stopped.

The officer replied ‘That’s all right then, so it was you.’ I thought it was a strange reply and asked what he meant.

‘Well, I just wanted to clarify things because we had a call from the police reporting that a motorist had contacted them saying on the hill between junctions 9 and 8A southbound on the M40, there was a serious, strange situation – cars were being flagged down by a little old lady with wild grey hair who was wrapped in a blanket.’

But the person who reported me didn’t stop to help.

Would you have pulled over…for a little old lady? Do you have the ‘Christmas Spirit’?

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