Acts of kindness. Come share your experiences please to cheer me up.

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So it's pretty crap here at the moment. The small town I live in (not in UK) has had its entire water supply infected with campylobacter(sp) and there are thousands here who are very ill. DH has been ill since Thursday and has lost 4kg, dc4 who is 23 months was up screaming most of last night as her tummy hurt, the others have temperatures. I have a fairly mild case luckily but still not good... Schools and kindys are shut, there were 360 away from school on Monday

BUT in amongst this there have been some lovely moments of kindness. Yesterday we had a knock on the door and was a local cafe delivering us food for dinner for free as one of DHs colleagues had nominated us knowing we have 4 young dc and no family here. I cried! They delivered food to over 200 families out of their own pocket. And just now we had another knock on the door and was a company bringing probiotic juice drinks round the neighbourhood A local store owner has paid for a water tanker out of his own pocket so locals could have free clean water as he saw so many people trying to buy water as the council didn't provide it quick enough. The local young orchards group is giving out free bags of apples later. The local sikh community is handing out bottles of water in the village centre. Its times like this you really see how amazing people can be.

Has anyone else got any tales of acts of kindness to cheer me up more?

This is a small thing but I was really touched by it. We were on holiday in Lake Garda and got on a very busy ferry with our two small and fractious children. We eventually found a couple of seats, right at the back.

A few minutes later, a lady got up, walked across the ferry and came to speak to me. She asked (in German) if we were German speakers. When I said I spoke English she said in broken English that she'd seen us get on with the children, and wondered if we would like to swap seats with her and her husband as they had a much better view. And we did.

The kids were thrilled and I thought she was lovely for even thinking to offer.

At the supermarket checkout, packing my bags very slowly as I had horrendous PMT and couldn't focus on a thing, lovely lady in the queue took over completely and did all the packing for me. Small thing, but I've never forgotten it (it was years ago).

More recently, my friends and my sister were absolutely gems when I broke my shoulder. Meals cooked, housework done, shopping brought in, rota for brushing my hair each morning, even help with washing myself in the very early days. I owe them all, hugely.

This thread is gorgeous.

Mine happened in a supermarket, when DD was just turned 2 and DS was teeny - about a month old. I was attempting a solo shop for the first time, and it was going horribly wrong; DS was HOWLING, DD was getting cross and I was a leaky post natal mess.
When I got to the checkout there was a bit of a queue and the DCs were getting louder and louder. I was expecting a lot of tutting at my terrible parenting, but the lady behind the till told me firmly to pick DS up, she would come and unload my trolley for me. When she said that, the person behind me in the queue said 'No, you stay and scan, I'll unload' and the man in front, who had just paid for his own shopping so could have escaped, stayed and packed my bags for me while I calmed the DCs.
I cried. But at least DS stopped

I had had a looooong week (first week as a teacher) and was in desperate need of some comfort food. I had also just received an email that had put me in a foul mood. Went into M&S and found some snacks, only to find out I didn't have my purse when I tried to pay. I apologised to the woman behind me for holding her up, and when she saw my stuff was only 95 pence she insisted on paying it. I was so, so grateful as I am pretty sure I would have cried had I not been able to have my snacks!

Got the ferry from Dieppe to Newhaven on Monday. Absolutely gorgeous weather and one elderly couple ( obviously with a camper van) had brought up two reclining sun loungers and were very comfortably laying back taking the sun. I was impressed with their organisations as there were only a few plastic chairs outside and their loungers were really deluxe, expensive ones, all padded etc. I was perched on the bottom rung of a set of steps when they got up to come inside. They insisted I use their chairs as they had had enough sun, and the man even came back out to show me how to recline it properly and make sure I was comfy.

Have just found this thread! lovely stories to read. Here's one that happened to me.

I live abroad in a capital city. I was pretty sick a couple of years ago, I was about ten days into a new treatment plan. I had been warned of quite a few side effects but hadn't taken too much to heart given the enormous amount of side effects that are always mentioned.

Anyway, I was feeling okay and so decided to venture out on public transport. I left the metro on a large "place" ( square maybe in english?).

All of a sudden I had really bad diarrhea and I soiled myself in public in bright daylight. I was absolutely mortified. I was ashamed and scared people would think I was maybe drunk or whatever. It was visible as I was wearing cotton trousers.

Then this stranger lady walked up to me and started emptying the pockets of her very very nice trench coat.

To start of with I thought she was looking for tissues perhaps and was thinking (in my head) no tissue is going to save me..... But no she took her coat of and held it out for me to put on. She then asked if there was any one she could call to come and pick me up in a taxi, I was in tears so she took my phone and called my partner and just said "I think you should come and pick up pimmsy in a car ASAP."

She waited with me until my partner arrived in a car to pick me up and getting into the car all of a sudden I thought to ask her for her phone number to return the coat once I had had it dry cleaned. She refused out right and said to me... You never need to call me back for the coat, you never need to be reminded of this moment.

Moral of the story, I'll remember that incident and that moment for the rest of my life, but the memory of embarrassment has been replaced by one of human goodness.

I still have the coat (after a rince and trip to the dry cleaners). It's a burberry trench. And my favorite coat!

As a relatively new convert, and a fairly blokey bloke can I say you lot make me laugh and cry in equal measure. Also makes me realize how much I'd like to give you all a hug. Not given to that kind of thing, but thank you

This thread has made me cry throughout. Thank you to everybody who shared their stories.
Absolutely gorgeous and just what I needed during a pretty low week.

I live in the south west where we had awful flooding a few years ago. Of course the locals did what they could to help each other out (putting up people and animals, organising food etc) but I will NEVER forget the Sikh charity Khalsa Aid turning up - mini busses full of big Sikh men with turbans who all rolled up their sleeves and helped build paths, rescue animals, give out sandbags etc. It's not every day in the uk that you be one the recipient of international disaster aid but they helped far more than the council did.

On a side note the sW is not the most ethnically diverse place and you can guess that some didn't know how to react to bus loads of Sikhs from Walsall arriving. But Ravi now has first name Madonna type celebrity down here and their presence has done more for race relations down here than they might know.

They were all invited back for the summer fete last year.

... And the staff lady in wait rose at the services last week who marched me over to a coffee outlet and gave me a free staff tea when she heard i had broken down and was waiting for the rac. Her kindness made the 3 hr midnight wait just less rubbish!

This thread has made me cry, both reading how lovely people can be, and remembering me my own RAOK.

When my dad was dying I had to get a Eurostar to see him to say goodbye. I was just about holding it together as I walked along the platform looking for my carriage until one of the train managers noticed me and she asked if I was ok. I burst into tears and although I don't think I made much sense, I managed to get out that I was going to say goodbye to my dad. She took me to my seat, sat next to me and held my hand while I cried, and then when she had to go as it was departure time, gave me a big hug. About 20 minutes later, a staff member from the cafe carriage arrived with a bag of croissants, orange juice and coffee and a note saying "we are all thinking of you. We will leave you in peace, but if you'd like someone to talk to please do let us know."