h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There am I driving down the A23 towards home on a bright April evening; one of the first really nice evenings that we've had this year. Then it all goes wrong for me.

I've let the car drift slightly, and the offside wheels start to run along the cats-eyes that mark the edge of the roadway. Except one of them eyes is missing and has left a bloody great big hole.

My front wheel hits it and something goes loudly and seriously bang.

Now I'm in a car doing 85mph down a dual carriageway with its front wheels pointing in different directions.

I lose the fight for control of the car and it veers into the crash barrier on the central reservation then bounces back out again, the curb that I hits at the same time as this takes the damaged front wheel off. So now I am out of control veering across the carriageway, and unstable on only three wheels.

The car rolls.

The first revolution and all of the glass goes. Everything that isn't tied down inside goes with it.

On the third (I think) roll I get thrown out of the car. I'm still not sure through which hole I leave. I think sensibly it must have been through what was once the sun-roof, but I really don't know to be honest.

And now I am flying through the air. It's a totally different sensation to the violent shaking and noise of the car rolling. This is almost peaceful, it certianly feels graceful.

But at the same instant I am struck with a thing that I can only call a moment of perfect clarity - and that is that I am about to die. The moment that I hit the ground my head is going to smash open, my neck and back will break, and my body will get torn apart.

It's then that my luck changes.

The particular part of the A23 where the accident happened is raised up on an embankment. When I was thrown from the car, I went over the crash barrier by the hard shoulder - whihc was *very* fortunate for me - and down the embankment. My impact was a glancing skidding one with the grass and weeds that grow up this bank. I was moving head first and on my back when I landed, and my shoulders took the brunt of the impact and then I rolled and bounced down the bank and into a ditch at the bottom.

To my very great surprise I was still alive. Not only that but I was for the most part uninjured. Yes, bits of me hurt like hell, but there were no bones sticking out at funny angles through my flesh, there was no brain matter splattered around and about. To be honest my greatest suffering seemed to be that I was now muddy and wet through, lying in a ditch.

Other drivers were out of their cars and down the bank to help me within seconds - hell they'd got nowhere else to go: the road was blocked with bits of mangled Peugeot. They were amazed to find me still alive. One of them was a nurse and she took charge, telling me not to move etc until the emergency services were on the scene.

The police and ambulance turned up pretty smartish - the accident was close to Gatwick airport, and they've always got blue-light vehicles hanging around waiting for something to do.

I was checked out by the paramedics, then gently loaded onto a stretcher and carried up the bank and into the back of an ambulance. Then it was off, all lights and bells blazing, to Redhill hospital. Once there I was prodded and poked and x-rayed and scanned. And the diagnosis was that I had a lot of cuts and bruises, some torn muscles and some damaged ligaments, but what I most needed was a bloody good wash down to get rid of the foul smelling mud from that there ditch.

All the way through this everyone was stunned that I had got out of this alive. The police said so; the witnesses to the crash, the paramedics, the doctors at the hospital after they'd been told what had happened; they all said that I was lucky to be alive.

This spooked me out this did. I couldn't make sense of it; I couldn't work out how I could have possibly lived through that crash. And because I couldn't make sense of it, the line of thought came to a complete stop. So I woke up.

You know, I very rarely remember my dreams. But that one I think will stick around for a while...

dreams like that could put one off sleeping

Have you considered therapy, dear boy? That's a dream that seriously needs to be analysed.

Traveller in Time hoping this was just a ba dream
" "

*packs away loobrush and bag of grapes*

<>

Or cutting out the double-cheese and sausage pizzas before bed?


az

I was impressed at your landing skills then, but you had to spoil it all didn't you....

Brilliant!

I love a good dream like that. Lots of scary realism and excitement and it all turns out mostly fine in the end.

I once hang-glided in a dream. I've always been curious to know how accurate it was. I could hang-glide and find out someday.

I don't recommend you test that dreams accuracy of course.

"but what I most needed was a bloody good wash down to get rid of the foul smelling mud from that there ditch."

Just out of interest, that wasn't due to any sort of external stimulus brought on by such a bowel-looseningly terrifying dream was it?

What Kelli said.

Next time you're about to describe a dream, please post a warning for your pals with dicky tickers?

I make no apologies for writing this up as if it were a real event, as that is exactly what it felt like at the time for me.

It took me several steps to work out how I had seemingly instantaneously moved from a hospital A&E department to my own bed at home. I initially couldn't work out why I was no longer in pain, and where all the blood and wounds had gone.

I quite enjoyed it - it was very well written. Though it makes me wonder whether to believe you about the foxes.


az

I had a very unnerving hospital dream once.

I don't know how I ended up there but I was on a gurney. A "doctor" injected me with a muscle tranquiliser. I was fully concious but compleatly paralyzed. (Typical nightmare helplessness). The doctor says something to a nurse, she comes over and makes a longitudinal incision in my fore arm. She uses something similar to a crochet hook to pull out a large vein or artery which she then cuts with surgical scissors. She walks away leaving me to bleed out. I can't do anything about it. I can't even scream. I feel myself blacking out from lack of blood, slowly ebbing into death...



And at that moment I was compleatly concious! I didn't wake up because of the dream, the dream was more "real". I fell concious! Reality was a dream and the dream was reality. It was a very groovy experience.


Of course I immediately tried to ignore any Freudian implications that could have arisen since my mother is a nurse.