Miracle On Hope Street

A Memory of Monk Bretton.

Many years ago I was a window cleaner and would often do my rounds on many of the small estates in Monk Bretton, many of my customers would bring me cups of tea and sandwiches out and in one case an Italian lady invited me in her home to sit at the table and have a pizza with her daughter and husband, odd jobs like fixing a broken T V Arial on top of their roofs. I've even swept a chimney out for my brother John. It was a hot summer's day when my brother asked me to go up on top of the roof and use the chimney brush, of which I obliged. The problem was that I had no roof ladder and all I had was a pair of trainers which gave me good grip to push myself up the slated roof. Having thrust the brush and the chimney rods down the chimney I then began to throw the brush on to the ground. Then I hit on a problem, due to the heat of the sun lashing out onto the slates, they began to shine and to be more slippery. Instead of coming down the same way I had to turn around and then slide or shuffle my feet down the slippy slates there was no grip on the soles of the trainers because the tread would not grip. I tried to stop myself but it became impossible and was now slipping out of control. My life was slipping by and to be quite honest I thought that my days were numbered. I closed my eyes and then called out to God and asked him to forgive me of my sins; I truly thought that I was going to die. I knew roughly where the ladder was as I'd asked my brother to stand parallel with the rungs of the ladder as it was not possible for me to see the top of the ladder; but as I said I could not stop myself and was running short of dropping off the edge of the roof some 18 foot drop onto solid ground. My eyes tightly shut, I just gave up all hope, and then, just then I felt something hard press down on my feet and then I heard a voice say ''I've got you, I've got you!". It was the voice of my brother who'd come up the ladder and had simply pushed down my feet onto the slates and caused the rubber soles to grip. He helped me turn myself around and then I climbed down the ladder. I was quaking in my feet and was shaking within but never let on that I had asked God to forgive me of my sins. Some years later in Monk Bretton I was to clean a three story house. My ladder was a double extension wooden ladder of a total of 32 feet. I had to extend the ladder so much that the bottom rung of the ladder was less than two feet from the wall. The ladder was resting on the window ledge which was painted with some plastic coated paint, the ladder was slipping from side to side as I moved from side to side as I clambered up to the top. With mop and scrim in hand I began to clean the window, but there was a small area in the corner of the window and I could not stretch out far enough to get into the corner. I jumped up into the air and lunged out at the corner piece and quickly stubbed at the pane. (Ever seen Charlie Chaplin who did the comedy act with the ladder?). As my feet went back onto the ladder, I quickly grabbed the top of the ladder. The problem was that with the ladder being so close to the bottom of the wall, and my weight being top heavy, the ladder left the windowsill with me going backwards. Instinct told me to push hard with my feet at the rung and let go of the ladder with my hands to push the ladder back onto the windowsill. It hit the sill with a crash and steadied itself, but my feet came off the ladder and also my hands now were too far away from the ladder. I dropped at least 28 feet from the top of the ladder and closed my eyes as I was dropping. May God be my witness but as I was coming down from that height, it felt like an eternity! So much so, that I even had the time to say out loud "When am I going to hit the ground?". If ever you have been in a fast moving lift when suddenly it almost comes to a stop, that's how it felt with me when I began to fall to the ground. Finally I felt my feet hit the tarmac. It's best that I tell you Hope Street was some fifty yards from the main road but it was a clear view from off the road. A bus had happened to pass by and a man sitting in the bus saw me fall from off the ladder. He had shouted for the bus driver to stop the bus and had ran over to me. He could not believe his eyes when he had seen me standing at the side of my ladder. If ever you've jumped from off top of a chair onto the floor, that's the only way I can describe my fall, I hardly bent my knees. Guess what, I climbed back up that ladder as if nothing had happened to me and finished the job off. If you think that was strange, some days later, with my ladder on my shoulder, I was walking on that same area when all of a sudden I felt someone pull at the ladder; no one there but me and then a voice said ''I'm Behind You". Was it God?Or a ghost?

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