Those kilometers and the red lights

For once, I do not want to go into too much detail here about the actual accident. It just doesn’t seem appropriate under the circumstances. I think all I need to say is that for some unknown reason, the car left the road and the next thing I was aware of, apart from some very loud noises and thinking this was the end of the line, I was at the bottom of the car which appeared to be lying on its side. It was dark, and I was disorientated. Again, sparing the detail which I do remember vividly, I managed to climb to the top of the car, which was the driver’s side, and push open the back door and clamber out. I stumbled down to the main road, falling over several times, with the intention of stopping a car for help, but there were none. That’s when I saw the shooting star.

I returned to the car to reassure Andre what I was doing, then went back to the road on hearing a car, which thankfully stopped despite my frightening appearance! The driver was very calm, and came with me with his torch to inspect the car in the ditch. He then called the emergency services, and I waited on top of the car, talking to Andre for what seemed like forever. Three ambulances arrived, and the next thing I know is I’m in the back of one, unable to move. We waited until MM&A had been extracted from the car, then the three ambulances set off for Perigueux hospital.

The ambulance men were great, and kept me awake asking questions about London and we talked in a mixture of pidgin French and English. While we were waiting to set off, I must have been interviewed by at least half a dozen people, various doctors and medics, police and Richard & Judy for all I know. At the hospital my limited French left me completely, and I stared blankly at various doctors and nurses who fired questions at me. I was undressed, poked and prodded, injected, pinched and interrogated. Then I was wheeled along a labyrinth of corridors. Staring at the ceiling as I was wheeled around on a trolley gave me the strange sensation of flying backwards across a Lynch-esque landscape of light fittings and ceiling tiles. I was put into a room where a man, who seemed very cross, rolled something around in jelly across my abdomen and tutted at a VDU. I was then wheeled somewhere else, in and out of lifts and along more corridors. At one point they pushed my trolley alongside André’s. I said, ‘Fancy seeing you here!’ André told me they had taken Michael to Bordeaux, before I was wheeled off again. ‘Shall we do coffee later?’ I called back to André. I was put in a kind holding room for ages, then a petite woman came in and smiled at me – the first person to do so since I arrived despite my attempts to win them over. She told me she was going to take me off to be x-rayed or whatever it is they do these days. The poor thing not only had to push me along all these corridors by herself, but then had to move me from the trolley onto the x-ray table and back without any help. She then proceeded to x-ray every single part of me from tip to toe. It took forever, and I was beginning to feel quite giddy from being posed in different positions. She took me back to the holding room again, I was connected up to a machine which constantly checked my pulse and blood pressure and then I was abandoned. I lay there for hours. Occasionally a nurse would bustle past, but nobody spoke to me, so I just lay there looking at the ceiling, wondering what was going to happen next.

That went on all night. About ten o’clock they wheeled André alongside me so we could speak. He was about to go and have his broken index finger operated on. I said I hadn’t got a clue what was going on, and then he was whisked off again. A nurse appeared, and explained to me in English that they were just checking my x-rays, and if everything was OK then I could go home. ‘Er, how do I get from Perigueux to Bergerac without any money?’ I enquired – I had no possessions with me except for my blood-soaked clothes. He disappeared, and came back to tell me that André’s mum and brother would come for me. I was told to get dressed, which was easier said then done as every single movement was agony. Looking like an extra from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I hobbled along the corridor to a waiting room, where people stared at me as if I was a zombie, which was exactly how I felt so I didn’t care.

I can’t remember ever being so pleased to see anybody when André’s mum and brother walked up through the car park. I scraped together all the French vocabulary I knew to explain what had happened. I staggered off to the waiting car, Mme Morant supporting me, and we were off back to Bergerac, passing the scene of the accident on the way. It was only eleven thirty in the morning, but the car had already been removed.

Back at the house, I mounted the stairs like Quasimodo with a crick in his neck, and painfully changed out of my gruesomely stained clothing, then returned to the car and back to André’s mum’s for something to eat. I called Hugo to tell him what had happened, and it then began to dawn on me that I was probably in shock. I was taken back home, and went straight for a packet of cigarettes – damn my weakness! I called Jacqui, who offered to visit later. I sat on the sofa going over and over in my head what had happened. I must have dozed off, as the next thing I knew was the doorbell ringing and there was Jacqui and Glynis. I was so pleased to see them, and when Jacqui suggested that I could stay at her house for a couple of days I jumped at the offer.

So, within I short period of time, there I am stretched out on the leather sofa in front of the fire at Bob & Jacqui’s, watching Sky TV, sitting down to a delicious steak dinner and staggering about going ‘Ooh owow ow!’ When I realised I had been up for forty hours, I took a handful of painkillers and cautiously lowered myself, groaning, into bed.

Wot a day! By the way, there will be an absence of photos on the site for a while. My camera was inside my coatpocket on the backseat of the car, and when I got it back the following Saturday, not surprisingly, it was smashed. So, if anybody has got any photos I could use in the meantime, please send them in! Go on - anything would be better than nothing - and I know, nothing is better than more bloody pictures of the Dordogne!