Live to tell

I remember the moment like it could have just happened. The sound, the shouting and the panic.

It was a Sunday morning and I had been out all night - at a fancy dress party, December 2002.

I was 24 years old and earning a lot of money. I had a flat, an excellent job and on this occasion, on the way home to see my parents who lived on the outskirts of Cape Town.

In Africa the sunrises are as beautiful as the sunsets - the great ball of fire rising up over the mountains casting a majestic shadow over endless valleys.

That morning, me perhaps till drunk and a little high too, I was driving home.

It was the perfect Sunday morning. I would get to my parents and Elizabeth, our cook, would do me a fry-up. In Africa all upper-middle class families have staff.

I'd then shower and just as the blazing sun hit my bedroom window, I'd drop into bed; stomach full, clean and satisfied.

So there I was, in my car hurtling along a rural side road to Mum and Dad.

Admittedly the sun was in my eyes. And perhaps the windscreen wasn't as clean as it should have been. But I had my foot on the pedal, determined to get home as fast as possible.

The truck up the road had decided to just stop, the driver thought it would be a great idea to get let some of the guys off to have a wee.

They were municipal workers being taken to the depot on the back of a truck.

The vehicle was stopped in the middle of the road and there was me, hurtling towards it, dreaming of fried eggs and a shower.

We know I hit the truck at around 60 miles an hour because the speedometer needle was smashed in that position.

I remember the impact, the moment I hit the truck.

It all happened in a split second but I remember hitting it so hard that the car bounced back in its tracks.

Panicking, I struggling to get out of the car. The impact of the smash had crushed the front doors too and I couldn't push them open. I had get out via the back passenger door.

It wasn't just the sound of metal crushing, one of the guys had been knocked off the truck landed on the car.

I got out and remember just panicking and swearing fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I called for my parents on the mobile and my Dad got there as soon as he could.

The truck driver called the police and the ambulance. One of the guys was still lying in the road.

Soon we were surrounded by the emergency services and onlookers. My dad arrived and in the process of taking everyone's details, snapped the pictures you see now, for insurance purposes.

The guy who fell off the truck ended up with a broken collar bone. At least three of the guys on the truck suffered whiplash.

In a split second my car went from looking like this:

To this:

The policeman must have noticed my dad's rather large BMW because he was happy to be handed some cash. I was never breathalysed and no statement was ever taken.

I walked free of an accident in which you cannot even make out what type of car it was that I was driving.

I hit a stationary object at high speed and at least four other guys, older and perhaps fitter than me were injured.

And me?

I walked away from it without a stratch, I cannot explain how or why.

The sceptic in me says it was some set of circumstances which all came together at just the right moment to prevent me from being badly injured.

The car didn't have an airbag but I was wearing my seatbelt.

The fantasist in me says that something - perhaps someone from a higher source came down and put their hand in front of me to stop me being hurt.

Look at the second and last picture. I have smashed the car so hard that there isn't a windscreen left. The bonnet looks like crinkle paper.

Of course I could have been killed. At the very least I could have been badly injured. But for whatever reason I walked away from the accident, literally, without a scratch.

I'm done with thinking that maybe there was a lesson for me in it. Who knows. Maybe somebody before me that morning got the tombstone marked 9 June 1978 - 15 December 2002.

It was such a beautiful car though - the first one I bought with my own money. He was called Winston.