The accident near the Abbey Stadium.

A true incident.

It had been a most exciting afternoon. I had taken my seven year old grandson to his first professional football match at the Abbey Stadium. This was the home of the “Black and Ambers” Cambridge United Football Team. This small football team languishes outside the main English football leagues now but not too long ago they were in vastly senior divisions. This was a perfectly safe venue for my ginger haired, Irish tempered, football crazy grandson.

 

Typically, I decided to support the visitors, Gateshead Football Club that hailed from my native North East of England. Raymond supported the home team. He was a little nervous initially as the three thousand crowd sang, jeered and cheered.  He soon got into the swing of it and he joined in the singing and shouting, safe in the family enclosure. Ray howled with glee as Cambridge thumped Gateshead five goals to nil. How he teased and taunted his decrepit Grandfather.

 

I was thrilled! My father never took me to see Newcastle United play and I made my own way to St. James Park when I was 12 years of age. Now I had responded to my father’s failure by taking my dear grandson to his first football match. In a “high” of hamburger stuffed, pop swilled ecstasy Raymond and I left the happy stadium to walk the one mile to the bus station, there to be taken onwards to the “Park and Ride” terminus.

 

We happy pair strolled off towards the city centre along the Newmarket Road. After about five minutes we approached the scene where Raymond could have seen his first bloody sight of horror that would have contrasted so wildly with the earlier part of the day. The scene was the east bound carriageway of the Newmarket Road. Oddly enough we were directly outside the remarkable and ancient “Leper Chapel.” This chapel is Anglo Saxon in origin. Yes, it predates the year 1066. It was the outer chapel of the ancient abbey whence the “Abbey Stadium” gets its name. Two hundred Saxon and Romano British ghosts from their grandstand in the chapel cemetery were fellow witnesses to the scene I now relate.

 

The first object relevant to this story was a blue and green "Citi 3" omnibus bound for the Cambridge suburb of Cherry Hinton.  Relatively full of passengers, it prowled eastwards, towards the pair of us. Just in front of this bulky machine wheeled a black, old fashioned, pedal cycle. This was propelled by a ginger haired man about 30 years of age.  Cambridge is like Amsterdam, where pedal cycles buzz around like bees around honey.

 

The pedal cycle was Raleigh type, black and sturdy. It was no match for the several ton juggernaut that prowled behind it. For some inexplicable reason the cyclist turned his head towards me and applied both brakes hard. He snapped to a hasty halt. The pedal cycle was positioned directly in front of the omnibus and smack bang in the middle of it.

 

From the knowledge gleaned from my earlier pre-retirement occupation the future could be predicted in gruesome detail. I am a retired police officer and so I had witnessed and dealt with many such dreadful accidents. I saw at once that the bus was not going to stop.  It would collide with the cyclist! The fleshy, bespectacled driver braked as sharply as he dared.  I saw women passengers staggering forwards responding to brake pads gripping brake discs with venom. Why, I even saw the large belly of the driver envelope the steering wheel as his body slid forwards as the brakes retarded.

 

I could predict what would follow!  The centre of the bus front would impact heavily on the rear wheel  pedal cycle. The huge weight of the bus would push forward and downwards, buckling the rear cycle wheel, driving the whole bicycle and rider downwards and under the all powerful, mighty, bus diesel engine. The rider’s legs, then lower trunk, would be thrust under the oil sump. If the cyclist was lucky he could fall under a wheel and be crushed to death in an instant. If unlucky the engine would crush his lower half to a pulp just before it stopped; thus leaving the red haired cyclist in agony.  Death would relieve his suffering after a minute or so. There would be blood, crunching of breaking bone and gristle and maybe the screams of those being crushed and made helpless by an unstoppable force.

 

What to do? Grab Raymond put my hand to his ears and wrench his head away to spare him the sight?  I knew that in any event he would see enough to disturb and distress him. I suspected that, by instinct, I would go and offer anything I could to the dying man.  But wait surely my priority should be Raymond alone! Whilst in this quandry and before I could grab and spare Raymond, the motions of the pending disaster were already in progress.  Unable to respond in any way and like others I momentarily gaped, watched, waited.

 

The bus, as I suspected, collided with the rear wheel of the pedal cycle. I waited for the crushing weight to drive the unfortunate pedal cyclist to his bloody and grisly end.  What happened next amazed me! The rear wheel of the pedal cycle, instead of buckling downwards, ripped saw-like through the fibre glass, green frontage of the bus. The cyclist knuckles were white on his brakes.  He turned, aghast, staring at the monster that closed in behind him.

 

The cycle did not move one inch.  The bus centre front split open on the cycles rear wheel that did not even go out of shape. There was a spout of fluid that gushed onto the road. The wheel had cut through a water pipe and the blood of the bus poured onto the road, hissing and steaming.  The bus continued forwards and stopped, inch perfect, meeting with the rear of the cycle seat. The passengers inside the bus reeled backwards as the bus stopped safe.

 

What was this? How come the bicycle had seen off and crippled the omnibus? The answer was, of course, that this was the year 2010. Engines were now in the rear of buses and there were no bulky bumpers on the front. There were no metal panels on the body of the bus, only fragile fibre glass and inner soft pipe works.

 

The cyclist gesticulated, angrily at the bus driver.  The driver berated the cyclist. I recall plainly the cyclist shouting “Why? Why?”  All that remained was a terminally ill omnibus and an unscathed cycle and rider.  Raymond giggled at the "paddy " between the pair of protagonists. I mopped my brow. I knew how lucky the cyclist was to be able to converse at all.

 

Raymond and I walked off towards home and he soon forgot all about the little trifle he had witnessed.

 

Well the ghosts in the Anglo Saxon cemetery must have chatted all night about that queer little incident.  I felt like one of them.  Out of touch, out of date date, past it!  Yet glad this little ginger haired seven year old would be ready, along with his peers to take over the generational reins.  So what now for me?  I peered at the Anglo Saxon Cemetery.  Now there was an interesting group of ancient spirits.  I am closer to them with every day.  On sunny autumn Saturday afternoons, instances like this, bear witness to it.

　

　

　

　

Author's Note

Sorry if this is too long. Real incident! Real people!

Reviews

[Thurston]

So many facets to this jewel, one can only be thrilled by the miracle of the outcome. Memorable day, Ron. But for you, it was memorable from the first step out to that game, because of the cast of characters from player to spectator.
Generations played off, the circumstances perfect for grandad to be the happy recipient of a five goal drubbing. We learn how unimportant the game score is, and then how important the life score turns out to be. Then the happy conclusion to a scene a policeman knows by rote will turn out, but in this case, the spirit of coincidence and technology and changing times dictated will end with damage only to the bus. I left this story happy. Happy for the cyclist, for Ron's grandson, but mostly for this lovely writer, Ron, who knows what matters, and writes about what matters with a distiller's concentration, a feeling for the best in people and that matters in the gift he gives the reader, that goes on giving long after Ron's final full point.

[Cherrie Palmer]

I re-read this today and must say you let this unfold in a fashion that gives the reader tunnel vision. Great job of sweeping us up into this event!

[Samuel Dickens]

Whew! I was afraid Raymond's day of joy and fun would become one of horror and source for later nightmares. Little ones can easily have their peaceful, innocent world's crushed by such doses of reality that this incident promised to be. I still vividly remember seeing my fat, brown puppy being run over by a car when I was about four. Perhaps the nearby ghosts intervened, having already seen too much violence and gore. I enjoyed this, Ron, and it wasn't at all too long.

[Cherrie Palmer]

You drew me right in, great job Ron I loved it.