Crash

The lorry hit us very fast and very hard. I thought, 'We are going to die'. We spun round. The air turned brown.  We came to a stop. I thought, 'We are ok'.

The engine part of the car was smashed. The lorry came to a stop 100 metres down the road on its side. Everything was very quiet. No-one around.

I opened the car door, got out.  I thought, 'I hope we don't have fire!'

I thought, 'I don't know the right number to call for the police...'

Steam, white vapour came from what should have been the underside of the lorry.  My sister and her friend Kate were still in the car.  I didn't want to go to the lorry. I thought, 'I hope that guy is ok. There's no way I could get to him, or get him out.'

At last I saw a man from the garage on the corner coming out into the open. He was on the phone. He would be calling the emergency services.

I couldn't find my glasses - it's hard to use the phone without them as the text is too small. I couldn't remember my sister's home number by heart, wanted to call her house to summon her husband and mine.   I tried.  It rang and rang. After a long time, Chris answered. I told him about the crash. Told him where we were - the road numbers at the crossroads.

I talked to Sheila and Kate. Eventually they got out of the car too.

People started to appear.  This must have been ten minutes after the crash. I took a couple of photos - it was hard to know what to do, what I could add.  An emergency crew arrived, parked by the lorry which was slung right across the main road, a complete barrier.  The road remained barred, by the way, for several hours.

A car stopped - some other people who were heading to the same social meeting we had been going to. They said they'd send someone back to be with us, and pass on the info that we were all right.

Teams of ambulances, police, fire engines, SAMU, doctors arrived.  There were a very great number of them.  They kept asking us, name, age, date of birth, address.... all written on random pieces of paper. It took a while for them to sort us out. Three old English women, two living in the area, one from England.  Each service seemed to need the same information, kept asking us.  Maybe this is a way for them to establish who is or is not compos mentis.

Eventually, about fifty minutes after I'd rung, Andrew and Chris arrived. By then we were in our various ambulances, having blood pressure and questions and palpations done.  They kept us separate. Kate was breathalysed twice, and had her tongue scraped for drug evidence. They kept shutting the doors of my ambulance till I said I was a bit claustrophobic and needed them open - so I had a bit of light, and air.

Two fighter aircraft flew over, very loud and very low. Practice. It seemed like an underlining of some sort of message - that there are powerful forces way out of control, which can affect us at any moment.

The medics took us to Cahors hospital - quite a long way away. We went in convoy, one in each ambulance.  I was strapped down onto my trolley-bed like a parcel on the top of a bus... and I had to talk (in French) to the young guy whose job it was, presumably, to keep me awake. That was tiring. Dredging up the right vocabulary for all these things - it took about another hour.

Then more checks, everything calm, polite, efficient. It all stopped for lunch. Then Kate and I were told we were free to go, Sheila had to have some sort of scan as she may have damaged her spleen.  Chris and Andrew had had lunch while we were being seen, brought us some pretty awful sandwiches (yum yum) and took Kate and I home. Chris then set off again to collect Sheila.

The afternoon was warm enough. I sat behind the house to paint the landscape which I have painted many times before, with the tiny road rising up the hill and bending out of sight. It's fascinating and very difficult to capture.  Looking at the painting now I can see how swiftly I did it.

There was a lot of driving during the day - to Cahors and back. France is so beautiful. I was longing just to stop. To sit and do nothing. To contemplate the grass, the hills, the winding roads, the insects.  To ponder how it was that by one split second we had avoided instantaneous pulverisation and death.