If I were a cat, you might say that this week I lost one of my proverbial nine lives. I was driving home from a game of tennis at the Wimbledon of the North, aka The Northern Squash and Tennis Club.
It was a crisp morning with clear blue skies. The traffic was light as I approached the turn-off at the new relief road to the airport. What happened next is partly blotted out from my memory.
There was a thunderous crash of metal on metal, and I was spinning out of control towards the oncoming traffic. Somehow the spin ended, and I was staring at the front of a gigantic truck reversing slowly. Bizarrely it was displaying Learner plates.
A young driver got out, looking concerned. Are you alright, he asked.
I’m fine, I heard myself saying, Are you alone? My disembodied self had wrongly assumed I had been hit by a learner who had lost control of his vehicle while driving illegally…
