Car Accident

I had my first car accident last bank holiday. Well, my first proper accident. My first accident took place during my driving test (the one I passed that is). On that occasion I was ten minutes into the test and doing the parallel parking, doing quite nicely in fact and nearly there, when a car reversed into the side of me. The examiner cried out and I cursed my rotten luck, but after exchanging details we carried on with the test and I passed.

But that aside, my first proper accident was on 5 May on the M5, between junctions 28 and 29. We were driving home in Millie, our little blue Rover Metro, after a nice weekend away in the north of Somerset. I was driving along quite happily in the middle lane when there suddenly appeared a large round object on the road in front of me. Unfortunately I couldn't change lanes. "Oh well," I thought, "I'll just have to go over it then." And I did. It made a real nasty sound, sort of like:

SCRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

"Oh bugger" I thought. Or was it "oh shit", or "oh bollocks". I can't really remember. I pulled over onto the hard shoulder straight away, popped open the bonnet and got out of the car. Jo then reminded me to turn off the engine, so I did that, and then we went to survey the damage. Oil was haemorrhaging all over the hard shoulder.

I then noticed the transit van parked on the shoulder just a little way behind us. It turned out that what I had hit was the wheel from the transit van. Not the tyre (that was sitting harmlessly in the central reservation) but the wheel itself. It had detached itself from the van's rear axle just a short time before I came along, lying in wait for me.

While we waited for Green Flag to send us someone the police turned up. I've never had any official dealings with a police officer before, and I have to say that he was very pleasant and reasurring. "We're quite glad you hit it" he said, "you knocked it off of the road!" And indeed I had, right onto the hard shoulder just behind the van that it should have been attached to.

I must confess to being ever so slightly excited at having to get into the police car to make a statement, and ever so slightly disappointed at not having to do a breath test. He did read me my rights though, just in case the incident ended up in a court case. Wow, I've been read my rights by a policeman! In my grandmother's view of the world that must make me a dangerous criminal and hanging's too good for me.

It took over a week to get Millie back. We didn't know if she would be a write-off, but she is now sitting happily in our parking space (until we replace her, hopefully later this year - poor Millie). Unfortunately we went with our insurer's approved garage, Nationwide Crash Repair Centre (take note anybody reading this), who gave us shockingly bad service. They picked the car up the following day, a Tuesday, and it was Friday before they looked at it. Then they took the weekend to decide it was repairable. Because they can't give a curtesy car unless it's repairable we were without a car until Tuesday of this week. It did give us the chance to experience just how poor public transport is though, just in case we had forgotten.

Theology Journal

I have started a separate blog for my theological entries. It will be easier for me as I will use some of the material later for some of my assignments, and I don't want to have to hunt through other stuff.

I would like to say that the material there so far is deeply profound, and that reading it will be a religious experience in its own right. Reading it might just be the closest thing to hell there is.

DANO trials

I saw the chance to move over to Blogger's new interface, DANO. I converted this blog, got an error, and then couldn't access it for a week. I also couldn't report the problem though BloggerControl, because whenever I tried to submit a report I got the same error. I eventually managed to submit a report using another 'puter. I see that my report is still unreviewed, but it has suddenly started working again so I don't care.

Hmmm, I like this DANO. It's a lot better than the previous one.

Scooby Doo, where are you?

Actually, I mean Simon Barsticus where are you? Your blog has been untouched for over a month, and my plaintive emails have gone unreplied to. How are you doing? Are you still alive? Has the world offended you, or are you just busy? Actually I know you're alive 'cos I've seen your comments on Shauna's blog. Speak to me Simon, one knock for yes, two for no.