by
menhir
@ 05 Mar. 2008 - 00:24:32
It was pitch black, apart from twinkling stars in a clear sky. The steep road with its switchback bends was one requiring care and driving skill, and in the total black of this night, the additional benefit of local knowledge helped. The temperatures had already dropped to two degrees celsius and they were still falling. There had been wet snow showers passing through all day and during the evening. The road was shiny, becoming treacherously icy.
Going North, up the hill, is a steep earth bank on the passenger side and down the hill, South, is a metal crash barrier beyond which there is a black chasm where it is possible to tumble far into bushes and trees; no-one would know until, perhaps, in the light of a new day, you might be spotted and found.
We curved round the second of the very sharp bends, began to guide the nose of the car up the hill. A minute flicker could be seen appearing from the earth bank, like a tiny reflection on shiny coal. I peered through the windscreen. We slowed, unsure about what we were seeing, as there was no light to reflect from anything at that height.
As we carefully drove on upward, we first spotted in our car headlights, a large chrome back end bumper. The vehicle was slewed across the carriageway, the driver's cab lodged into the earth bank. Then I saw a shadowy, dark figure on the road. It was a young man who was wearing dark clothing. He had a grey and black striped sweatshirt with a hood which was pulled over his head, his head was hunched down into his shoulders, to give him some protection from the snow showers and the low temperatures. He was waving a tiny key fob light. There was no other light. We stopped and the young man said his vehicle, which had skidded on ice, appeared to have an automatic electrical cut out on impact and was totally without power. He waved us on. We stayed.
We got out our emergency magnetic torch which has an amber flash light and placed it on the roof of our car. Meantime, for safety's sake, we kept our emergency lights on and the crashed vehicle spotlighted in our headlamps.
With some effort, the driver, who was shivering and no doubt suffering with a degree of shock, was encouraged to sit in our car to warm up. It was just our misfortune to be in a mobile phone black spot. Finding a signal was down to pot luck; we did not have any. The driver said he was waiting for his brother, to whom a message was sent, to return with a breakdown truck.
Of the three of us there, I was the only person wearing light clothing. I stayed as much in the headlights of our car, as I could. Vehicles going North and South obeyed my hand signals, carefully passing the crashed vehicle. By the time one driver travelling South stopped to check if anything was required, we had waited, it felt, a long while for assistance to arrive. " Thanks, oh yes", I said. I asked if he would call in at the next village on the route he was travelling, to find the breakdown company, (name given) where we thought the driver's brother might also be found.
We saw the amber flashing lights before we saw the breakdown truck. It seemed to be fairly racing along the road, followed at the same pace by a car. To my consternation, they zoomed past us! After what was seemed like a very long five minutes, the two vehicles returned, (having found somewhere to turn and face down the hill). I took the torch off the roof of our car and having assured ourselves that the young man was in good hands, we travelled on our way North and home.
