I often sleep intermittently, and I was awake in the middle of Friday night when I heard strange noises in the little street outside. It sounded like a heavy metal object being moved, and then voices talking. I wondered who would be moving things at this hour of the night, hoped it wasn’t our car, but didn't get up to investigate. Hubby slept on.
When we got up on Saturday – rather late as it happened – we found a card from the police to say that in the night a car had crashed through our hedge and knocked over our fuel tank, and that we should get in contact with them. Then people started arriving, and we weren’t even dressed. First our house-painter, who had come along to clear our gutters of leaves – we’d expected him to come at some time but not necessarily then. Then a neighbour, the father of the driver who had crashed – to apologize.
Apparently his young son had already been out drinking once, then in the early hours, while his father slept, drove out again with a mate at what must have been great speed over a short distance, hit a car parked opposite us, and skidded into our hedge, demolishing our fuel tank and its brick supports!
Having dressed, we went out to inspect the damage, and the car in question was a real write-off, and had done quite a lot of damage to the other car on its way. It had broken through a fence and hedge and pushed our tank off its base. It is not, luckily, a tank that we use, but our predecessors did, and we had left it there as a back-up but had never had to call on it. There was probably very little fuel left in it, but as there was the smell of fuel, apparently the fire brigade had been called out as well as the police and ambulance!
I do not know if any other neighbours had gone out there at the time, or whose were the voices I had heard – one had been a woman’s. The side door of the car was covered in blood, and the driver was now in hospital, with the family worrying about a possibly severed nerve in the arm. The driver’s younger brother was now inspecting the wreckage, and it was a very salutary lesson for him later on about where drinking and driving can get you.
I should have thought of photographing the car before it was towed away, but here, anyway, is a photo of our demolished fuel tank.
What is in my mind more and more is that if the tank had not been there the driver would have crashed straight into our house! And into a room with a lot of breakables in it. It makes you wonder if it would be better to leave it there as a bulwark against future events of this kind, although you don’t expect lightening to strike in the same place twice. Yet we are going to have it removed as looks a mess.
The police have not been to see us yet, and we've remained fairly calm about things. Our house-painter said they couldn't have crashed into nicer people! We sympathize with the father, who has to pick up the pieces, and is worried about the physical condition of his son. He’s also lost his car, as it was his that the son took. One dreads to think of the problems that family will face.
The police ought to leave a few more wrecked cars standing around, so that young people and drinkers can see the physical results of a crash when one drives without being fully in command of a vehicle. I have the impression that in the population as a whole people are much more responsible now when they go out partying about who is drinking or who driving, or whether everyone is going home in taxis. But of course doing what is frowned on is part of the kicking-over-the-traces process of growing up, and one cannot expect reason always to win out. Yet the result is that a number of people now have a lot of bother.
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