Years ago when I was working in Pontypool, I would leave my house at 6am and drive up to the traffic lights on Malpas Road. In three years I rarely ever saw another vehicle, and I certainly never saw a milk float.
Then one wet, dark morning there it was, right in front of me. The traffic lights were red so I stopped behind it, squinting at it through the swishing window wipers.
The red light on this junction lasts for about four minutes, but the green light is on for only about six seconds, so when they change everyone hurries away as fast as they can.
But this morning when the green light came on, nothing happened. The milk float didn’t move. One second passed, two seconds. Nothing. I considered giving him a toot when – whoosh – a huge supermarket lorry thundered past along Malpas Road, having jumped the lights.
It was obvious that if the milk float had pulled away when the lights changed he’d have been squashed. Worse still, if it hadn’t been there, I would have pulled out and …
Amazingly, the only sensation I felt at that moment in time was one of quiet calm, and an awareness that I was being watched over by someone – or something – very special.
The milk float trundled away just as the lights went to red again, and by the time I eventually got onto Malpas Road there was no sign of anywhere.
And I never saw it again.
Brendan Gerad O'Brien 