Don't Ignore That Quiet Voice

"Are they gone yet?" I asked my wife as I put the finishing touches on my latest article. The boys had been out in the hallway messing about for the last ten minutes. Now that their reaching the pre-teen years even Daniel (the once "class pet" ) has developed an acute phobia about going to school. Each morning it's like pulling teeth just getting them out the door on time. She grinned and nodded. I jumped out of my chair ready to attack the day.

My wife went to bring the baby down as I quickly warmed a sipper cup of milk. Today I was determined to make it out the door without forgetting a single thing. As we backed out of the drive I remembered that I hadn't packed my divining rods nor my tape recorder (two absolute musts if you plan on detecting other-worldly activity). I thought of jumping out of the car to get them, but I'd already gone back once to shut the living room curtains and I didn't fancy making a second trip.

Baby got the best deal when it came to breakfast. Since we were all eating on the fly to ensure that we'd be back at the house in time for the boys return, we brought along some chicken fingers and milk for her. For us, we stopped at one of our favourite bakeries. I stayed in the car with baby whilst the wife ran in to get something to eat. She returned with two savoury sausage rolls that looked absolutely dismal to me. Even though I was desperately hungry at the time, I simply couldn't bring myself to even consider taking a bite. In the end we wound up pulling over at a convenience shop further down the road. Thinking that nobody could screw up a ham and cheese sandwich , I went with that. I turned out to be so very wrong. It tasted absolutely horrible and it gave me a sick stomach.

As we ate and chatted in the car we continued on our way to St. Margaret's Church in East Wellow. My wife and I really enjoy visiting historical sites and getting in touch with our roots. Once we got into Romsey we weren't sure which way to go so we pulled out the GPS. It turned out to be a good thing we did because East Wellow is a very small village that would've taken forever to find without it.

The church was small and quaint, but in all honesty it was quite unimpressive compared to some of the churches and abbeys that we've visited lately. I walked about and took a few pictures. I was most impressed with a wall painting of St. Christopher that dates back about six-hundred years. In ten minutes I'd seen the entire thing, snapped a few shots, read the very limited information that was posted, and briefed some old photos of Florence Nightingale. Time to go home!

I began pacing a bit and wondering what was keeping my wife so enthralled with the place. Slowly she continued to saunter around snapping frame after frame with her camera. Finally, in some random manner that I've never been able to figure out, she decided she'd shot enough pictures and we headed out.

It wasn't until we'd gotten into the car and were down the road that she told me that the church was supposed to be haunted by Florence Nightingale and that this was her whole reasoning for choosing to go there today. Everything inside me groaned. At first I was frustrated that my wife forgot to say something sooner and that the literature in the church said nothing about the haunting. But when I thought about it a bit I realised it was my fault. If I'd listened to my intuition I would've had my ghost detecting tools with me. Then, even if I didn't detect anything, the presence of the tools would've jogged my wife's memory.

More times in life than I care to count I've been oblivious to opportunities because I failed to listen to my intuition. Today was just another reminder to stop it. From today I definitely plan to pay much closer attention.