“Oh, God, it’s a nightmare!” I’ve used that expression so often, I that it’s almost lost its meaning. (Except, of course, when I have real nightmares, which are, I have to say, of the Stephen King variety, with monsters, horrors and, oddly, excellent plots).
But recently I actually experienced what really did feel like a living nightmare. I had a car crash. Now, I’ve never had a proper car crash before. I’ve bumped into people’s bumpers and people have bumped into mine, and once a bus scraped my side and once a bunch of manic drug-addicts in a stolen van drove into my parked car and wrote it off, but nothing has ever happened that made me doubt my own abilities as a driver.
But last week was different. I was driving home along a semi-motorway at midnight, when a man appeared ahead out of the dark with a flashing red light on his head like a Cyclops. I drove round him and turned my head to look to see what he was warning me about. A body? A fire? A three headed monster? But my curiosity was my undoing. A moment later I’d crashed full on into the broken-down car he’d been trying to warn me about. The car was a write-off.
It’s not a place that most of us are familiar with, to be honest – the side of an enormous road, in the pitch dark, in the freezing cold, and with cars roaring by, lighting you up like a ghost in the headlights before leaving you abandoned. Particularly in the company of a Cyclops, whose car you’ve just driven into. True to the nightmare theme, this man – if, indeed, it was a man – was not remotely perturbed that I’d driven into his car. He just continued signalling wildly to the approaching lights. Even though by now, of course, the danger was far worse, because as well as his broken down car, there was my car as well, sticking out into the middle of the road. If you can call it a car. It looked to me more like a crushed and abandoned space vehicle out of one of those ghastly apocalypse movies.
While we were waiting for the police, which I’d called, an enormous lorry thundered by, screeched to a halt, and out of his high cab hopped another strange character, a kind of Hobbit. He was wearing a woolly hat, he was half-shaven, and his arms, I swear, reached the ground.
Saying nothing, he signalled to Cyclops and between them they moved my car into the side of the road. Then the Hobbit hopped back into his cab, and roared off.
When the police arrived, I thought that I’d escape from my bad dream, but in my discombobulated state they, too, appeared like alien beings. You could hardly look at them for blue flashing lights, yellow stripes, curious peaked cars and when one of them was called from his radio, I thought it was him speaking and I tried to reply.
We had to wait for an hour for a pick-up truck to remove the cars to God knows where, an hour I spent in a shocked state, half crying, half gasping, half contemplating “What if…” all the while numbly assembling a curious assortment of debris from my car, into a string bag to take home with me. Maps. Old tapes. Residents Parking Permit. Mints ‘for the grandchildren. Tissues. Notices reading “I have put money into this meter but it doesn’t work”. The sat-nav. Curiously, a rape alarm. A torch. A windscreen scraper. And, finally, the little angel I use for getting my parking spaces with the moving wings when you wind her up, still intact on the dashboard.
Presently, a pick-up lorry arrived, with a ramp, and the Hobbit’s brother (apparently), an oil-smeared , bearded, mumbling Dark Creature, shoved my car onto his lorry and drove off.
At home, over an enormous vodka, I thanked my lucky stars I’d only had a small glass of wine before my journey. That night, and for nights afterwards, I dreamed of crashes. I woke in a sweat. I went by public transport – a revelation. And I ordered a new car.
Now I’ve put my plastic angel back on the dashboard. I drive like a snail. I put the headlights on even in the daytime. And I hope I never have to meet those Night Creatures ever again. It was, truly, a nightmare.