And today I’m slightly pissed off and increasingly shook up

though still hugely grateful and slightly astonished to be here.  (see previous post)

The thing is, I gave the insurance company a lengthy and detailed account of my little adventure while I was waiting for various people to come and rescue me.  At the time this seemed like a good thing, fresh in my mind and all that.  However, it seems a much less good thing to have to explain it all over again to the courtesy car company, the legal assistance company and the police (because the nice young copper who took down a brief statement and my details at the scene of the accident filed me under witnesses instead of drivers involved).  And I have to say that explaining exactly what happened and how it was that I wasn’t underneath a lorry and why my car had damage to its front lights not its back ones and then not being understood is wearing my patience and making me feel shaken all over again.

It all seems quite simple to me but it’s quite amazing how difficult it is for anyone on the other end of a phone to understand me.  And they all seem to think they really need to understand, not out of interest you see but because they need to know that someone else’s insurance will be paying in the end.

Pffftht!

Never mind.  At the time, I was hugely impressed with myself and very pleased that years of watching lorries nervously had finally paid off and proved that when you are forewarned, you are actually forearmed as well.  And given two seconds you can do a plan and it can work.

Anyway, I’m now feeling a lot better, a) because the police told me that both injured drivers are now out of hospital and although the guy who was trapped in his car is in braces and stuff, he’s not as badly broken as he looked at the time*  and b) because Barney took me out for dinner.  I think he’s quite pleased to be keeping me : )

And also, there were a number of shocked and shaken people wandering around – the accident involved five cars and two lorries.  And people were nice to each other.  There wasn’t much to say except are you ok but they said it. Even people who had been hit without any warning at all.

As for the driver of the lorry, I feel for him.  Yes, he was totally at fault whatever was going on in his head as he failed to notice what was happening ahead.  But I’ve no doubt he’s paid for that already in remorse and loss of confidence and guilt.  Glad for him that no one was killed.

There’s something wrong with a system in which men drive for hours and hours in vehicles which weigh too much to stop within a sensible distance on roads with nowhere to escape if things go wrong.   There’s something wrong with a system in which every single hold up could have death and destruction hurtling towards it.  And there’s something wrong when this kind of thing is almost commonplace and when it happens it’s considered to be the fault and responsibility of one man alone at the wheel of several tons of unstoppable machinery.  People aren’t designed to hurtle, nose to tail along thousands of miles of tarmac in charge of all that metal and momentum.

Let’s bring back horses and canals!  Or for heavens’ sake, trains and buses!

Today I have to make nice little diagrams to show all those phone-deaf people what happened.  Tomorrow I am going to visit wolves**.  This will be much nicer.

And so is this.

*And me and the policeman agreed that this was wonderful and much much better than it could have been.

**There’s a wolf conservation place about four miles away and tomorrow they have an open day.  I can’t believe I’ve never been there!