Things I Didn't Know
2 May

I feel as though I have entered a parallel universe.

At 16:45 on Thursday 26 April, time bifurcated. In one universe, I continued on my way to Buxton and attended a performance of Mozart's Seraglio. In the universe in which I am now trapped, a car crashed into the back of mine and everything since has been about trying to make sense of that. Am I mad, in a coma or travelling in time? as the tagline to Life on Mars used to have it.

Still, there is a Quaker thing about living your life adventurously. So I am trying to experience all of this as though it is an adventure and not a challenge. Mostly, it working.

I am learning quite a lot of new things.

Firstly, on the night of the crash, I found out that the AA don't do anything about road accidents. They only cover breakdowns. So they couldn't help get me back to Crosby. Mr Cullen (the crasher to my crashee) is with the RAC and so he made one phone call and they handled everything for him. Luckily, Mr Cullen was local to Knutsford and knew of the name of a local garage who towed me home. When I get my new car, I am going to sign up with the RAC.

I've also discovered that doctor's surgeries (well ours certainly) don't deal with accidents. They re-routed me towards Litherland Town Hall drop-in centre

I've become a lay expert on whiplash. Apparently, it can take up to three weeks to manifest itself though, these days, the worst effects are minimised by the design of the cars and the use of the neck rest. Certainly, although I was bounced about in a relatively low speed impact, I can see that it would be much worse in a car whose frame was rigid and was without any neck rests.

It also came as a surprise that the majority of the claim is not handled by the insurance company but comes under the legal cover which I acquired as part of the policy. When I took the insurance, I didn't really understand what was meant by free legal cover. Now I know. It means that I am officially part of the culture of compensation.

In reality, my car is a write off. I shall possibly get £1,000 for it. It will require something like £4,500 to replace it with a reasonable like-for-like. The shortfall will be partially covered by uninsured losses like personal injury, loss of earnings, etc. I see these things as considerations; they are in fact compensation.

I shall be back in work tomorrow. I don't want to go but I have the feeling that, the longer I put it off for, the more difficult it will become. So, I get back into the saddle once more.

I've not done very much during this unexpected break from work. I was supposed to be doing things in the garden and decorating the back bedroom. Mostly, I felt cabbaged and fitful and not really engaged enough to attempt anything. Somehow, I managed to read Daphne du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek. It is the centenary of her birth this year. Having broken my du Maurier duck with Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel when Ross and I were on holiday back in 2004, I have continued to read her work with some pleasure. This slight, bodice-ripping tale of piracy on the Cornish coast in the eighteenth century is spirited fun. The educated tone of voice and use of language combined with a better-than-average sense of the psychology of the characters put it above the norm but I still couldn't give it more than three stars.

Much better by half was The King's General which I read earlier in the year but somehow failed to note in these electronic pages. Several things take this to a higher level. The setting of the Civil War is not unusual but the author was writing the book in around the mid-1940s and so all of the talk of the privations of war were very much within recent experience. With Nazis not far away in the Channel Islands, the fears of what might happen come across as acutely felt. Added to this is the plight of the heroine who is injured within the first few chapters and spends the rest of her life in the novel in a wheelchair. Few novels tackle that lifestyle. Add a cracking yarn and strong narrative style and it is an excellent read.

One final bit of a surprise was Brian Sewell's The Naked Pilgrim: The Road to Santiago which hails from a Channel Five series of television programmes. I presume that I didn't watch them because I cannot normally stand the plummy tones and the opinionated felicities of the presenter. However, on his own terms, talking on subjects about which he was interested, he was very good value for money. The six half hour programmes sped by and made me want to visit a number of the places displayed to us - and that is always the hallmark of a programme that has worked well. Reluctantly, I have to offer up four stars.