An odd kind of day
I was speaking at a conference in Wales last night. I left the hotel just after nine this morning (there was something on the TV about 'an electrical fault' on the tube in London, but I didn't pay it much attention) and climbed in my car to drive home. Twenty minutes later, as I crossed the Severn Bridge in the fast lane of the M4 motorway, a silver hatchback (a VW Golf, according to the witnesses) slammed into the passenger door of my car, forcing me into the metal crash barrier in the middle of the road. I was travelling at 70mph.
There was a horrific grinding noise as the car slid along the barrier and I remember fighting to stop it spinning out into the fast-moving traffic on my left. BANG! Two airbags went off simultaneously – one in the steering wheel and one from above the passenger-side door. I remember smoke, the acrid smell of cordite, a burning sensation in my right arm (from the explosive charge that sets off the airbag), another BANG! and the steering going strangely light. After what seemed like a very long time indeed, the car ground to a halt (still in the fast lane of the motorway, still somehow pointing forwards) and I climbed out and dialled 999 on my mobile. A truck and a van had stopped on the hard shoulder and the silver hatchback had pulled in about 200 metres further down the road. I called the police and put the phone back in my pocket. It rang again seconds later. It was my mum. 'Are you ok?', she asked, sounding panicked. 'What? Er, yeah I'm fine. I'm not hurt at all. How the hell…?' 'I'm watching the news', she said, 'I'm so happy you're…' 'The car's destroyed, mum. It's a write off.' 'What? What do you mean? Where are you?' I explained. Mum started crying. And then, out of the corner of my eye (with a chilling sense of deja vu) I saw the silver car drive off, wheelspinning back into the traffic.
This, I thought to myself, must be one of the most realistic nightmares I've had in ages.
An hour later, at the recovery yard, I sat with a cup of tea in my hands, mesmerised by the dusty TV in the corner of the portakabin office. I never realised how much I loved London until I saw the red bus, blown apart. The kind of bus I catch all the time. I've been shaking all day.
— Filed under Miscellany