I'm not kidding, last night, J and I were about 20 mins away from Coventry where we were looking forward to stopping for a KFC rather than cook when we got home, a 4 and a half hour drive doesn't ever seem to put me in the mood to put my culinary skills to the test. When along the A14 Kettering Road, we saw a large Argos truck come out of a lay by, he was moving quite slowly so we stupidly thought that he was going to be sensible and wait for an opening in the road. Oh yes, we saw him, J even commented "what's he up to?" when suddenly, he ramped up his speed, vaulted out of the lay by and we couldn't stop in time. We tried to steer round him but there was a car penning us in to our right and we couldn't get over without hitting that car too. All I remember of the collision was screaming "J,J,J,J........AAAAHHHHHHHHHH" and trying to scramble over my seat because the corner of the truck hit my side of the car and I seriously thought it was going to keep coming and come right through the window. Luckily it didn't and J had enough savvy to get us off the road and onto the side bit of grass. The truck at first seemed to keep going, but thankfully he stopped to see what happened.
I managed to get out of my door (oh, it's broken and it hardly opens now by the way) and just in my socks, didn't even get enough time to put my shoes on, I got out of the car, and in the ankle thick mud I raced over to that truck, by now the driver was out of his cab coming towards us, and I screamed at him - nothing coherant to start with you understand "Wha, Wh, Wah, What, What the FUCK do you think your doing?!!!" Honestly, I didn't know what the hell was going on, all I knew is that this guy shouldn't just drive off like I thought he was doing in the first place then suddenly, he asked me, "Are you all right? Is everyone in your car alright?" Honestly, I didn't know, I had no idea if I had been hurt, or even if J was all right, I felt such a rush of guilt that I didn't even stay to ask J if he was ok. I felt so awful, suddenly I felt so sick, because I looked behind me back towards the car, and J was still in the car. Oh god, what if he was hurt? Oh god! What have I done?! I went back to the car at what felt like a snails pace, but J emerged, unscathed, like me rather rattled but ok, and suddenly I realised I was also ok. Thank goodness.
I just didn't know what to do, I just was babbling, and I just didn't know. The boys went to do all the swapping of insurance details stuff, and I stayed with the car. On my own I suddenly realised I was very cold in the night air, so I got my coat, and on standing up, I felt so faint. I was so worried that I would just pass out. So, I scrambled up the slope towards the trees. I figured that if I was going to pass out, I didn't want to do it anywhere near the road, and to help keep me alert I called my dad. Yep, a near 30 year old woman, strong, independent, a force to be reckoned with was sobbing down the phone to her father "but dad, I've never had a truck come crashing towards me before" I said as I wept.
We ended up realising that although the front light was smashed in and my side door wouldn't close properly, it was working, it could run. We limped to the services only 4 miles away and the truck driver, Michael, was actually a really decent guy and stayed with us for two hours trying to get our car a little bit back together, at least so that we could get ourselves home. While the boys did that I sat in a little thief cafe and all I could think was I needed toast. Some hot buttery toast, then I started to feel a bit better. He felt so awful about the whole thing, he was upset that it was our first car and it was now smashed up and that I was so obviously upset by the whole thing. I got upset again when he said that this meant he would lose his job, even though there was no damage to the truck at all. We managed to get home with the battery being held in with bungee straps, the headlights being held in with sticky tape and my door having a gap all the way round, enough that I could get my fingers out. What a journey is all I can say.
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