A couple of nights ago I was putting my nearly 5 year old to sleep and as usual he asked for a story, but this time one about the angels. His mum has been telling him that in the end we all "go to the angels".

Anyway, I immediately knew which story to tell and it does appear that a possible angelic intervention has helped me out in a car crash situation at least once before - remember my post about the crash in Albania and the mysterious Toyota Hilux - an incredible coincidence or something more?

I need to cast my mind back to October 1983, when I was a couple of months shy of my 12th birthday. It was a Sunday night and was often the case my dad was taking his brother-in-law, my uncle to a large village about 30 minutes away as he was working as a teacher and still living in my hometown while he and his family were finding a place to live nearer to his work. On this occasion, and many like it, my brother and I also had to go because our mum was working an evening shift as a nurse.

On this particular evening, for no apparent reason (as it was something we had done many times), I really didn't want to go. I can only describe what I felt as a terrible feeling in my stomach, not a stomachache but some kind of foreboding, a sense of dread and unrelenting unease. However, my dad, as lovely as he is, is not somebody to oppose. You do as you are told and that is the way we were brought up and I believe I am all the better for it. 

So, we got in the car and set off. My dad was driving and my uncle was in the front passenger seat and my brother and I were in the back; and back in those days there was no rear seat belt law so we were unrestrained.

The journey, as usual, was totally uneventful until we were five or six miles from our destination and I was half-asleep.

Then, suddenly, I became aware of the car skidding and snaking all over the road and the headlights illuminated a telegraph pole and then some grass as we left the road and suddenly the car started rolling over and, while it is impossible to know for sure, I think it rolled over twice before settling on its wheels. I, and presumably my brother too, were tossed around like clothes in a tumble-dryer and I screamed. In the darkness, I still remember two car headlamps in the distance as we were being thrown about. When the car came to a stop, I found myself sitting on the parcel shelf and half hanging out of what was left of the rear window, which was now devoid of glass and almost triangular in shape.

The next couple of minutes is a blur, and I think it always was, but I do remember being helped back into the car and then leaving through the door and when I stood I felt almost like I had some kind of a tick-tock rocking motion going on from side to side. Whether I was actually doing this or not, I do not know.

By some miracle we were all fine. I had only scraped the top layer of skin off my forearm - and I can't even remember which one as there is no permanent scarring. My brother had a bruise on his bum which we have always assumed came from contact with the handle of the window winder, my uncle had the tiniest cut on the top of his head and my dad was completely unharmed, but strangely when the car settled he found his glasses, which he has to wear all the time, folded underneath him on the car seat.

The police were called and did what they had to do. Then we got a taxi to my uncle's rented flat as none of us needed any hospital treatment and then finally the three of us came home leaving our uncle behind. I have got no idea how we travelled back home.

And that was that and I thought nothing more of it. My brother and I were given the day off school the next day, just in case some kind of shock kicked in and my dad went back to the site of the accident. The road was straight and there was a field running alongside it with a ditch. In one place only there was an embankment probably about the width of three cars (presumably to give tractors etc access) and there was the telegraph pole with a snapped cable whipping around in the breeze. I always thought it was some kind of a support cable, but more likely it was for earthing the current in the overhead cables.

What I now think happened, is that we hit some mud and lost control before leaving the road. My dad recalls heading towards the telegraph pole and wrenching the steering wheel as hard as he could to avoid it at all costs. We then hit and snapped the cable which tripped the car and flipped it maybe even slightly into the air before it crashed down onto a side of the roof (hence it becoming triangular and almost tent-like) before rolling over back onto its wheels, It may or may not have done an additional roll between that that initial roof impact and landing on its wheels. For weeks or even months afterwards that earthing cable remained fluttering in the wind.

I remember when I went back to school on the Tuesday nobody believed me because I "wasn't injured enough for it to be true".

So, that was the experience, remarkable we had all come out of it unhurt, but with a bit of weirdness about it concerning the mystery of my dad's glasses.

So, moving on to the conclusion, about fifteen years later and after I became a committed Christian, I was in a meeting where the guest was described as a man of God and a Prophet called Denny Cramer who was over from the U.S. He picked me out of the crowd (it wasn't a particularly large one) and with no prior knowledge of me or my circumstances he said "God isn't done with you and in fact the Devil tried to destroy you when you were about 12, but God sent his angels to protect you" (and presumably not just me if that was the case).

My mind immediately went back to the car crash and I had an image in my head of an angel in all of its power grabbing the rear wing of the car and pulling it round to ensure we didn't hit the telegraph pole and then - almost as an afterthought - safeguarding my dad's glasses and putting them in the safest place he could.

I know it all sounds far-fetched, but given what happened and the fact Denny Cramer had no explanation as to what he said in a worldly sense, it seems to be the most plausible explanation. Of course ,a sceptic could always argue; if there was an angel, present why did it let the car crash in the first place and not take action sooner?

So, wherever you are and whatever you are doing, stay safe and well my friends as always and may God's angels protect and cover you whatever you believe.