How little we know about other members of the human race. How little we know even about our own neighbours and their lives.

On today’s walk on Saturday July 11th 2009,I met two of my neighbours. The son of one of them had hearly had his caravan stolen from in front of his house at 11 a.m. a day or so ago. Three men were involved and one was sawing away at the lock. They had a large car ready to tow the caravan away.

Fortunately a policeman lived nearby who saw suspicious activity going on. He walked towards the caravan with his doberman. The men took off.
A policeman can be a very useful neighbour!

As I walked up Wimborne Avenue, a large black dog started barking at me. I told it to shut up. Then I reflected that it was only doing its job – a similar one to the policeman’s! I felt a little guilty!

As I turned into Clarendon Way, another neighbour caught up with me. He had been in the Rifles in World War II. He was shot by ‘friendly fire’ in Italy. The bullets hit his tommy gun which he held by his side. The tommy gun probably saved his life although some bits of metal wounded him in the side.

Meanwhile his mother was back home in London enduring the blitz. She also experienced a miraculous escape. She was about to move forward at her house when intuition or an angel or God stopped her. At that moment a bomb hit the house throwing her into the air. Amazingly she landed without injury on a nearby bed!

About this time I was sitting outside my hut in a Japanese concentration camp in the middle of China. Eric Liddell of ‘Chariots of Fire’ fame was in the same camp.

A Japanese soldier was walking towards me spinning his pistol on his finger. Instinctively, I moved into our hut. The gun went off. The bullet might have hit me if I had stayed put. Another miraculous escape!