Proof life can be a ringer for Love Actually

It doesn’t happen very often but, every now and then, life is like a movie. My daughter, tallulah, recently got engaged to her boyfriend tom. He gave her a beautiful diamond ring, which turned out to be a bit too big for her finger, so they sent it away to be narrowed.

By chance, the jeweller lived not far from my mother. so last Friday tallulah picked her ring up from her grandmother. My wife and I were there too, and so was my brother, so it was a happy family occasion, all of us admiring the little diamond sparkling on tallulah’s finger.

tallulah and my wife and I then went to Haslemere station, in surrey, to catch the train that tom was already on, as we were all off to stay with tom’s mum on the Isle of Wight.

We boarded the train towards the back, but when tallulah phoned tom, it turned out he was in the front carriage, and had saved us seats.

so off we set along the narrow corridor, through the crowded train, bustling along with our bags and cases, banging our way from carriage to carriage.

eventually we reached tom. tallulah delightedly held out her hand to show him the diamond ring. And then the drama began.

the diamond had vanished. It was one of those moments when you simply can’t believe what you are seeing, or, in this case, not seeing.

somehow, somewhere, at some point as we bustled from one end of the train to the other, it had fallen out of its setting.

tallulah later said that she had made a conscious decision not to burst into tears, and to concentrate on searching for it. But what were the chances of locating a diamond roughly the same size as this ‘o’ on the floor of a crowded train? I would compare it to finding a needle in a haystack, but needles are a lot bigger than diamonds, and haystacks a lot shorter than trains.

As the train hurtled along, we embarked on our hopeless search. tallulah found the young guard, and asked him to make an announcement. He thought it would be best to hold off until we’d had a good look. He was worried that, alerted by his announcement, someone might chance upon the diamond and pocket it. With that, the admirable guard got down on his knees, lit up the torch on his mobile phone, and started scouring the floor, foot by foot. We joined in, though personally I had given up hope, and just felt very sad. not long before Portsmouth, the train’s final destination, the guard finally made his announcement over the tannoy. ‘there is a young lady on board who has just got engaged. Unfortunately, the diamond on her ring has fallen off somewhere on this train. Could I ask all our passengers to help look for it?’ the scene that followed was extraordinary: along the length of the train, virtually all the passengers — tired commuters, youths with cans of beer in their hands, families on their way to the Isle of Wight — were all down on their knees, searching for the missing jewel . In these days of bitterness and strife, it was a heartening sight, even if, as I suspected, the quest would prove fruitless. But suddenly, from quite nearby, came a shout of ‘Is this it?!’ A young man with a beard had something in his hand. But was he just a joker, having a laugh? tallulah rushed up to him — his name was Harvey eliot — and he showed her what he had found. Yes, it was the missing diamond! she whooped with delight.

Standing nearby, the guard heard her whooping and announced over the tannoy, ‘Ladies and gentleman! good news! the diamond has been found!’

In response, the hundreds of passengers who had been searching got up from their hands and knees, and clapping and cheering erupted throughout the train.

the moral of the story is that, however unlikely it may sound, life is sometimes like a Richard Curtis film.

Complete strangers can go out of their way to help one another, items lost may be found, disaster is sometimes followed by triumph and, as in this tale of the diamond in the crisp crumbs on the 6.30pm from Haslemere, you should always hold out hope for a happy ending.