A monthly anecdote of Suffolk living

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That sinking feeling

The note of panic, desperation, almost pleading in Chris's voice made me say...

by Guy Massey

After you leave our drive on the way out, you join what we call the main road for about two and half miles down to the village. Of course, by no stretch of the imagination could it be mistaken for a main road; it is only marginally better - not quite so rough and bumpy - than the drive. Although it is a public road with what was, about ten years ago, a tarmacadam surface, it is still very narrow and single-lane with deep, cavernous ditches on either side. It is often said that we have some of the deepest ditches in Suffolk. And I don't doubt it!

The only chance of one car passing another is in the entrance to one of the fields. Those who use the road regularly know where to stop and pull in and where others will stop and pull in. It's not an ideal situation but as there is no other option it works. Or rather we make it work. Every so often a stranger will venture into the area and not know where to stop and ends up having to back up a good distance to an entrance. And fairly regularly, perhaps two or three times a year, someone will end up in the ditch.

Just earlier this week we had someone who missed the corner and ploughed their van into the ditch. As the road comes down from the village towards the stream it goes through a quick right-left chicane before crossing the water and heading on up the hill the other side. Whether the driver was drunk or tired or both is unclear but what is crystal clear is that he (or she) totally missed the right hand turn and went scooting off the road, neatly decapitating at ground level a number of young sycamore saplings. This slowed the forward motion slightly but still allowed the van to nose-dive into the far bank of the ditch. The poor driver must have been not only shaken up from coming off the road in the first place but distraught to see how the whole of the front end of the vehicle had folded in under the bonnet not unlike short-crust pastry. There again vehicles are not made as well as they used to be. But what is? In a Land-Rover circa 1965 one would just have engaged four-wheel-drive, backed out and stumbled on home. But those were in the gentler days before the breath-analyser and the drink-drive laws.

Many, many years ago we had had a cracking good evening with a small number of friends and a disproportionately large number of bottles. It was just at the beginning of winter and when the last of the guests left, somewhere around 01:45 hrs, there was just a touch of frost on the windscreens. Debs and I staggered and giggled our way upstairs and stood for a moment or two at the bathroom window watching the car lights flashing around the sky as the inebriated drivers lurched from one side of the drive to the other trying desperately to stay between the trees. I remember at the time Debs slurring: "We should have asked them to stray, I mean stay." Unfortunately they did stray; strayed straight into the ditch. Well, it may not have been straight but the end result was the same.

Having seen them turn onto the main road, we had flopped into bed. It seemed like an hour or so later, but it must have only been about 20 minutes, when I was woken up by one of the dogs barking. Our dogs can bark with the best of them - better sometimes - and often they bark just because they want to bark but sometimes when they bark you just know that all is not well and that something is amiss. And this was just one of those occasions. It wasn't frantic barking as if someone was trying to break in. It was more: "Dad-Dad-someone-has-come-back' barking. I may have gone to bed feeling on top of the world but by now I was feeling decidedly under the weather and for tuppence I would have stayed in bed semi-comatosed and let things sort themselves out. But we couldn't have the dogs barking all night and we couldn't have people outsider loitering with or without intent.

When I first opened the back door and the outside light came on I couldn't see anything. Then as I looked around I saw Chris leaning with his back to the wall. The walk up the drive had cleared his head a bit; he was now just tired.

It transpired that he had made it to the main road but, for reasons unknown, and still unknown, he had not been able to keep on the road and had let the car slide into the ditch. He asked if I could get the tractor and go and pull him out? Everything is possible of course but I suggested he called it a day and stayed the night and we would deal with it all in the morning. No, no, that wouldn't do at all, he said. He had to get home. "Well, at least come in and get warm while I get dressed," I said.

Ours is only a small, cab-less tractor we use for cutting grass; it's not like one of those big, modern monsters you see in the fields today, although, as usual, it started first time. So with me driving and Chris perched on the mudguard we trundled down the drive and onto the road to see what the problem was. I was peering ahead in the dark looking for his car when Chris suddenly said: "There it is." "Where?" I said, not being able to see anything. "There," he said. And sure enough there it was in the ditch with all four wheels completely off the road and the roof below road level. The engine was still running with impressed me enormously for a car literally on its side. "I'll never pull that out of there Chris," I said. "We need a crane." "Go on try," he said. "No Chris. There's not a chance. Leave it until the morning."

The note of panic, desperation, almost pleading in Chris's voice made me say: "I'll go and see Paul and see what he can do." So we carried on down to the outskirts of the village and pounded on Paul's back door until he eventually came down in a rather snappy tartan dressing-gown and opened it. I explained the problem. "Leave it 'till the morning," he said. "Come in and have a drink." Chris again pleaded and Paul, always a soft touch and always willing to help where he could said he would go and get his Farmall loader and see what he could do. Nothing Paul likes more than to be man-of-the-moment.

Paul, having a clearer head than Chris and me, looked at the situation and immediately set about doing what needed to be done. In less than ten minutes Paul had his car back on the road but all was not right; one front wheel was pointing in a totally different direction from the other. Paul pulled the car down to his yard and Chris and I went back to the house. Again I suggested that he stayed the night but again he said no, so I told him to take the Land-Rover home and we would see him later in the morning.

And then today, Debs had to wait at home for over an hour as an electricity utility vehicle called for help having tried, unsuccessfully, in do a three point turn in the road and ended up with its back wheels hovering in the air rather like the final scene in The Italian Job. However, I have an idea.

© Copyright Guy Massey, November 2002

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