When Ursula and I had decided to get married, we were faced with an unforeseen dilemma. At that time, we were living fairly close to each other so meeting daily and then going home at night to our own flat, was no problem. However, Ursula’s flat mate, moved away and the landlord took back the apartment.
Rents in London had now gone through the roof and there was no way Ursula could afford to rent another apartment in Pimlico. But moving far out, to the outskirts, would have put a strain on our relationship, making it impossible to spend every evening together.
We decided that we would find a two-bedroom flat in a less central area and share it together. This was probably not the safest idea morally, but we felt we could handle it. I had the idea that Surbiton or Kingston would be just right. It was only a 10-minute train journey from the center of London and had a good reputation. Since I was very busy at work and Ursula had a day off, I told her to go and find us a flat there, in that area.
I had no idea how impossible this request was but later we found out that people spent weeks and weeks constantly looking for accommodation in this highly sought after area where prices were rising nearly as fast as London.
The Lord, however, was there to help and promptly dispatched his good angels to assist. Ursula got on the bus and felt that going on this search was an act of obedience to God. She decided that, since this choice of location seemed to be an inspired one, she would simply go to the area and wait till God told her where to find this flat.
She was sitting on the top level of a red double decker bus completely at a loss as to what area she was going through. Had she reached Kingston or Surbiton? She hadn’t a clue but was waiting on the Lord to guide her. As the bus neared a stop, she was prompted in the spirit to get off immediately. She responded and ran down the stairs and off the bus. The bus went on and she looked around. There, right beside the bus stop, was an estate agent. All the property in the window was for Kingston and Surbiton. A good sign to say the least.
She walked in and told them that she wanted to rent a two-bedroom flat in the area. The lady smiled. “You are in luck, I have just the one. It came on the market this morning and it isn’t even on our list yet.”
It was a shared house with the landlady, an elderly woman, living downstairs in a self-contained section. Because of this lack of total separation of the two areas, the price was unusually low and well within our budget.
In minutes she was in the car with the agent and on her way to see it. Mrs. Ferrari who lived in the bottom part of the house, was very pleased to have such a quick response and showed Ursula around upstairs. As well as the two bedrooms, the main feature of this accommodation was the big front sitting room in which we would eventually host many prayer meetings. A great bonus also was the lovely garden around the house which the landlady said we could make use as much as we wanted.
We snapped it up immediately and moved there within a week or two.   A day or two later, we introduced ourselves to Fr. Kierin, the parish priest of St. Agatha’s, the local church in Kingston and told him of our situation. We said we were planning to get married in about six months since we needed to save up for the wedding.
He looked at us intently and said, quite bluntly, “Not in my parish! You will get married in three weeks. I will post the bans today.” We did not argue, we could see it was either that or nothing. Fr. Keirin was not one to argue with. Thank God for this good, down-to-earth servant of His! We discovered very quickly that sharing a flat together as an unmarried couple, was very stressful and not at all the ideal situation. We were very glad for the wisdom of Holy Mother Church.