Talk around Town

Late last night (Friday), I was getting ready for bed (it would have been around midnight) when I heard a long screech of tires followed by lots of crumpling and bumping noises. It sounded like it happened at the crossroads that is one house up from my house, so I rushed outside, but I couldn't see anything and there weren't any sounds to indicate what was going on. I was in my pyjamas and it was cold, so I didn't go and investigate, but went to back to bed knowing that if something had actually happened there would be people closer to it that would sort it out.

Just now (Saturday morning), I walked down do the town's only supermarket, a tiny one that is directly behind my house. As soon as I came around the corner I saw what had happened last night - a car had lost control on the main street, gone out of control across the kerb and across a side road and straight into the side of the hardware, which is directly behind the house that is right nextdoor to me. There is a big hole in the side of the hardware shop that has been boarded up, and there's fire brigade tape all around it. The wheels hit the kerb so hard that the kerb is broken, and there's big gouges in the dirt everywhere. You can see the tyre tracks right back to where the guy lost control on the main street (which is the street the hardware and supermarket are on). The car had been towed or driven away by the time I got there. And there were people everywhere, at least by Little Country Town definitions.

I chatted to the hardware owner for a while and he said that the guy (they know who it was, you have to in this sort of town!) wasn't injured, but he had been very drunk and was showing off for his mates when he lost control. Idiot! It was very scary for the hardware owner and his family because like most shop families in Little Country Town, they live out the back of the hardware in an attached house, so they were right up close. And apparently the guy ran off rather than sticking around and facing the consequences . . . as if that helps in a town small enough that you can shout from one end to the other!

So anyway . . . if I had walked up to the corner last night, rather than going straight back inside, I would have seen the accident seconds after it happened and would have been one of the first on the scene - and in my pyjamas no less as there's no way I would have stopped to change!