My good/bad news
Whilst travelling up to essex from devon to spend christmas with dave's parents we had a dutch lorry try to changes lanes, only problems is that we were in the way. Oh, and we were in a tunnel. On the M25. Apparently there's a lovely bit of our paint on the wall of the tunnel now.
Only the car was really damaged. Thankfully it was the volvo and therefore built like a tank. And thankfully the lorry ground along the side of the car for a bit before we were knocked across a lane of traffic and therefore everyone around us was desperately hanging back (as far as I can work out). Dave didn't completely lose control and there was a lane between us and the wall. It was enough to make the difference and allow the car to not go headfirst into it, and allow the breaks to do their job. We ended up exactly where we fianlly hit, we must have slowed down a lot. Also the dog was curled up on the side that hit, meaning he wasn't thrown around too much either. He was shaken and scared and trembling and panting for the next couple of hours but alive and apparently so far not in need of vet treatment. I believe I was the one most affected by the whole thing. I was the one who was right next to where the lorry scraped, I was the one for whom time slowed down, I was the one who saw the wall coming and had the image burnt onto my memory, I was the one whose seatbelt locked and then realised I'd hurt my thumb because whilst I braced the rest of me for a hit (I used to horse ride and fell off just enough to teach me the best way to fall, same thing for cars apparently) I didn't move my thumb from my seat belt. I have bruises from the seatbelt on my lap and chest, my thumb still hurts, but we were able to make call to the emergency services and then when they stopped the traffic we were all able to walk away from the car. The car's written off but we're alive and were able to refuse going to the hospital (I refused because I have no idea what they would have done with the dog if we'd both gone in). Oh and the other good news - a family not far behind us stopped and as soon as the traffic was stopped and they knew we were okay (they were stopped on the hard shoulder on the other side of the road) they had a mug of sweet tea all ready for us and pulled out a bowl to offer some to the dog too).
The next day dave went to pick up some herbal calming tablets from superdrugs and I'm still having to take them. I'm very aware it wouldn't have taken much and we wouldn't have walked away, either from the car or the hospital. The next day I rang my family to tell them and ask my mother to ring my sisters because I couldn't face telling the story too many times at that point. So what did they do? They both rang me straight away to check I was alright, despite my mum telling them not to. At least my eldest sister was trying to ring me with some good news anyway, but my other sister then went on to tell me I had to get back into a car and get driving again, and that's what she did after someone went into the back of her when she was coming off the M5 sliproad near home. Because yeah, it's the same thing, obviously.
I'm writing this all up because whilst I'm not struggling to retell it again so much now I don't really want to retell it 20 times over in the next couple of days. And you know now why my texts on christmas day were a bit funny. I'll happily talk about it, but details about the crash itself I would prefer to let my mind heal it into the past now and forget the details. I didn't even get excited about Who on christmas day.
PS drive safe guys, look out for foreign lorries, and dear gods stay safe whilst driving to and from panto.