Its been ages since I've written on here. I got slack, distracted, I've been on holiday and back, I ran out of gas, I--I had a flat tire! I didn't have enough money for cab fare! My tux didn't come back from the cleaners! An old friend came in from out of town! Someone stole my car! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts!
IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!!!
Anyway its been a while and as I have come to terms with the fact that almost no-one reads this blog so for this instance I'll use it as a form of therapy and get out of my system a terrible death I witnessed the other day, one that left me somewhat shaken.
My son I were on my way back from a trip to a lovely little Lincolnshire Market town called Spalding (those in the know will realise you have just read sarcasm) and traveling along the A16, a major road which like many of the fenland roads has very few places to pull over should you need to and no hard shoulder for breakdowns and such, just farmland, dykes and soak-aways; which (I recently learned from the 5-O) are referred to as 'Soft shoulders'. I guess they are called that because if you parked your car there you'd need a soft shoulder to cry on 'cos your car is in a ditch.
It was from one of these ditches on the other side of the road that I saw a man appear, he stood up and with some urgency made a move towards the busy carriageway, by this point we were perhaps 30 feet away from him, I could see he was in his 50's or 60's, grey hair and beard, black sweater, jeans and trainers. On his side of the road coming from the opposite direction to us was an articulated lorry moving at speed, 50 or 60 mph I guess and without missing a step the man from the ditch jumped into the road like he was hailing a cab, arm aloft as if trying to catch the attention of someone on the other side of the road - I started to swerve out of his path as I thought if he makes it across in front of that truck I'll hit him with my c... OH FUCK
He didn't make it across in front of the truck, there was no chance. It hit him mid-stride and by this time we were 6 feet away. As we passed along side I saw the impact, I saw glass shatter and heard the moment his body was struck. I saw the plastic grill on the truck deform then split and spit debris on to the road as the man was collected by the massive vehicle, one moment moving across the the flow of the traffic the next moving with it.
In fact the more I think about that detail in particular the more it shocks me - horrible as it is to imagine, you can imagine what might happen to a body suffering the massive trauma of being hit like that but what shocked me the most was the instantaneous transition from 0 miles an hour to road speed in zero seconds, it was unnatural to see a person change direction so quickly he surely must have felt nothing. The truck driver didn't even see him, I'm sure of this because he didn't hit the brakes until after the impact, poor bloke musta thought a bomb went off.
I slowed but there was traffic behind me and as I mentioned before there is no safe place to stop, I noticed a car maybe 4 or 5 cars behind me swerve to the other side of the road and stop, the driver got out and started running to the scene. At this point my son (7 years old) said "you swore". I asked him "Did you see that?", "see what, Dad"? he was too distracted by a happy meal toy* to see the carnage.
When I next could I pulled over to call the police, I'm sure others did too but it seemed the right thing to do and by the time I got home I couldn't shift the image from my mind, the moment of impact and how fast it all seemed to happen. What was he doing there? how could he not see the lorry? I talked it over with friends and loved ones and we concluded it was just a tragic accident, one of those things where your guard is dropped momentarily and the worse happens.
The next day 5-O called back and asked for a statement, the officer in charge was on his way to collect the dead mans wife and take her to the D.C. morgue, he told me she had called in to the station to report him missing and with some more enquiry discovered he suffered from both alcoholism and long term mental heath issues. Apparently he had been contemplating suicide for some months. Strangely, this left me relieved. Somehow the thought of this guy committing suicide was less tragic than an old fella - someone's dear old Dad or Grandpa - being mown down. It was horrible to see, don't get me wrong but he wanted to die and it somehow makes it OK. (I just wish he'd stayed at home and used a barrel of sleeping pills instead).
I relayed this info to the same friends and obliged sympathisers and on hearing it the same phrase kept coming up in statements"stepped out" like, "well, some people decide to just step out in front of things" and it got me thinking, thats what we say isn't it 'Step out', "he stepped out in front of the train..." and when we see dramatic representations on TV or in Films we see the same, a lonely passenger on a platform, Thousand yard stare, slowly moving to the edge of the platform while all around is the hustle and bustle of daily life. We empathise 'cos we know how hard it can be sometimes and we fear for their safety, we want to say "cheer up" or "it'll be fine" but before any one notices they step past the yellow lines, the train rushes through the platform, we see their feet, a single step is taken and the camera cuts to horrified faces as the emergency brakes wailing the train to a stop mix with the screams of the horrified onlookers.
Spalding man didn't 'step out' though, there was no pause for reflection, no-one to empathise and no-one to fear for his safety, he just up and ran. Determined to end whatever malaise troubled him.
It worked.
My lasting image of him that day now is not tragic, its not an old man accidentally mowed down while signaling to persons unseen, it is of a soul released, joyous almost, his arm aloft as if punching the air in final celebration of a long troubled life now over.
And the truck driver has a new mascot for the front of his rig.
Bonus.
*(we had double pancake breakfast BTW. Nom)
