One For the Road

I should have known 2022 wasn’t going to let me go without one final kick in the gonads: on what should have been a pleasant trip to London, I wrecked the car.

To be fair, I’ve been driving for over 50 years, and this is only the second car I have wrecked. I think that’s good going, especially when you consider that, in neither case, was there any property damage or injuries, apart from the cars, of course, my pride, and possibly a confused owl.

Allow me to explain:

The first car I wrecked was the Ford Falcon beater I bought after I passed my driver’s test. Kids don’t drive beaters anymore, at least not where I live—their parent’s buy them brand new Audis, or BMWs, instead—but back in my day, many of us drove beaters, and this particular one didn’t have a reverse gear. Seeing as how some beaters might be minus a floor, or come with no starter, or functioning windshield wipers (all of which I owned at one time or other), having no reverse gear was a minor inconvenience. I lived in the country; I rarely had to back up and, when I did, I just got out of the car and pushed. Never a problem.

Until I found myself driving home one night, along a dark, deserted highway, and heard an almighty THUD against the side of my car. Curious, I pulled a three-point turn by nosing the car to the edge of the road, pushing it backward, and pulling onto the opposite lane. I cruised slowly by the spot where I had heard the thud and saw a small, clearly stunned, owl standing on the centre line.

It was a deserted highway, but cars and trucks did go by occasionally, and if one did, it was not going to end well for the owl. So, I drove past, with the intention of pulling another three-point-turn, after which I would stop and help him to the side of the road.

I turned, put the nose of the car on the road edge, and jumped out, but I couldn’t push the car backward. In fact, it kept rolling forward, slowly, then gaining momentum. I suppose I should be glad that I didn’t manage to run myself over. Instead, I jumped aside, and watched my car roll down the hill and crash into a tree, leaving me stranded on the dark, deserted highway, with no one but a stunned owl to keep me company.

Then the owl flew away.

Off on a tangent:

The story of how I got home is mildly interesting, but feel free to skip it if you’re tired of me rambling on.

At that time, my youngest brother was going through a phase where he didn’t talk. Odd, yes, but there were five of us, and we all went through phases, so no one paid it much attention. (I, myself, was going through a religious phase at that time, so not talking wasn’t even near the top of the annoying behaviours list.) Where it did become annoying was when he would answer the phone, listen for a few seconds, put it down, and refuse to tell anyone who it was.

Back on the dark, deserted highway, I walked to the nearest farmhouse and asked if I could use their phone. I called home, someone answered and, by the silence, I knew it was my brother. “It’s me,” I said, “I’ve had an accident. I need help—” CLICK. I called back. Same response. And so, after thanking the kind homeowner for allowing me to use his phone, I walked. All the way home.

End of Tangent.

My latest automobile misadventure involved a train strike, unfamiliar roads, an invisible bollard, and, once again, doing something stupid in a hurry.

We were booked to see a play in London, but the trains were on strike. (By the way, so are the Postal Workers, nurses, driving instructors, Boarder Force, ambulance drivers, highway workers, teachers, bus drivers, and anyone else tired of not having had a pay rise in 12 years and continually being asked to do more and more work for less and less money. But that’s a story for another day.) How we decided to get to London was to drive to Morden, a town about an hour away from us, which has the most southerly Underground terminal on the tube network, and take the Northern Line to the city centre.

The Sat Nav got me to Morden and put me on the four-lane, divided highway that runs through the bustling town. There was a road that would take me to the car park coming up on my left, but roads in the British sense still throw me, because what I saw looked more like someone’s driveway. And so, I went past it.

The Sat Nav immediately started chastising me, telling me to pull a U-Turn, but on a divided highway, this was not an option. And even if I could U-Turn, I couldn’t get to the service road from the other lane and would have to go…somewhere. In a panic, I just stopped. Then I checked my rear-view mirror. The road was empty, with no one around to see me do anything illegal, like back up on a four-lane highway.

There was no need to rush, or panic, but still I slammed it into reverse and hit the gas, unaware that behind me was a very sturdy, bell-shaped bollard that was too low to see in my rear-view mirror, and which did not set off my backup alarm even as I crashed into it. That alone would have been bad, but I was going fast enough that the car rode over the top of it, coming to rest with two wheels off the ground, and the point of the bollard under the back passenger’s seat.

It was not my finest automotive manoeuvre.

The tow-truck driver was impressed, but a bit perplexed about how he was going to get the car off the bollard. We left him to puzzle it out and did the only thing we could do: we took the Underground to London Bridge Station, had a lovely walk along the south bank and lunch at a nice café while waiting for the train station to open (the strike paused that morning, so the trains were to start running in the afternoon). We did note, during lunch, that we could actually still go to the play, but neither of us felt in the mood. So, we took a train home, arriving before the predicted rain, which was a pleasant end to a day that had not had a pleasant beginning.

I remain deeply chagrined about the incident, but if I can retain the lessons learned—concerning impatience and rash action—then perhaps I’ll get through 2023 without similar unpleasantness.