The kindness of stranger melts couple’s hearts
MYSTERY SHOPPER PAID FOR PENSIONER’S GROCERIES AFTER CASH MIX-UP
A COUPLE left unable to pay for their shopping because of a pension mix-up were left speechless when a generous stranger bought it for them.
When Jean and Alan Young finally reached the front of a ‘mile-long’ queue at Aldi, Alan’s card was declined.
He asked the cashier to keep his shopping so he could pop home to find out what was going on.
When he returned to the store in Milnrow, Rochdale, to ask if it could be kept one more day until his pension came through the cashier laughed and told him how a kind stranger had paid for his £49 shop.
The stranger did not leave any contact details and asked the cashier to wish Alan a nice day.
“I just stood there like, a gormless idiot and thought she must be joking,” he said.
“You read about all this evil going on and this just feels unreal – it’s like floating on air,” Alan, from Milnrow, added. The act of kindness came after an awful year for 71-year-old Alan who had just left hospital the day before as he had battled an E. coli infection for five weeks following a serious operation.
The couple now want to thank the stranger from bottom of their hearts. “I can’t get over it,” he said. “I’m 71 and you think you’ve experienced just about everything but it was just unbelievable.
“I have had such an awful year. I received an £18,000 council tax fine, got tonsillitis, which at my age is quite serious, had my prostate removed, and then E.coli for five weeks,” said Alan. He had been doing a big shop after coming out of hospital and he had also picked up a set of three onesies for his grandson, Adam.
Due to his infections, Alan has not yet been able to visit the new baby.
Alan moved to Rochdale from Leeds almost 45 years ago and says the people there are so kind.
Jean, 68, wants to tell the stranger: “It made our day. It was the perfect day. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”