An Inauspicious Day

I came upon a motorcycle accident on the road to Winchester today.  Thankfully, I wasn't the first car on the scene - there were  two vehicles ahead of me and I decided to let them deal with the niceties of calling the emergency services before turning my car around and finding another route to my destination.  It wasn't so much the accident scene itself that I couldn't stomach - thankfully it seemed to be a single vehicle accident, but from what I could see looked nasty, with the motorcycle in bits in the opposite lane and the rider lying on my side of the road - but rather the number of other drivers from the queue behind me who felt the need to leave their cars and come and gawp at the scene.  As I turned the car around, I could see that quite a crowd had gathered around the prone rider, (I have no idea how badly they were hurt).  Quite why, I don't know - I decided that there was nothing I could do to help as the first driver on the scene had clearly called the emergency services , my presence would only further hinder their efforts to reach the scene.  I've never understood the need some people apparently have to ghoulishly rubberneck at accident scenes - it's bad enough when they simply slow down for a good look as the drive past, but this lot felt the need to get up close.  It put me in mind of that Ray Bradbury story 'The Crowd' about a group of people who gather at the scenes of car accidents.

Even though I didn't loiter at the scene, the whole incident left me feeling very unsettled for the rest of the afternoon.  It stirred up memories of the people I've known who perished in motorcycle accidents - far too many, sadly.  It also put all the other problems I'd been dealing with leading up to it in perspective.  Suddenly all the unexplained road closures I'd encountered and the tailbacks caused by traffic trying to get to 'Carfest', (quite why these idiots thought it necessary to drive all the way through Crapchester to get there, rather than staying on the M3, then the A303 before taking the Micheldever exit is beyond me), seemed trivial.  Likewise, the time I'd had to waste trying to get some sense out of Royal Mail about a phantom delivery and trying to find out where my parcel actually was, was suddenly put into perspective.  (I had been emailed to say that an item that had to be signed for had been delivered to my address, even though I was in the house at the time and no one had called and nothing had been left.   Plus, the Royal Mail tracking claimed first that my address was inaccessible so the item couldn't be delivered - front door opens onto the street - then that it had been signed for and provided a signature that wasn't mine.  According to Royal Mail, it was all a mistake and that the signature was that of the postman.  They couldn't explain the 'inaccessible' bit, but assured me that it was all a mistake.  When I later re-checked the tracking site, they had changed their tune - they had been unable to deliver because the address was 'inaccessible' and would try again tomorrow.  In which case, why wasn't a non-delivery card left today, giving me the option to collect it from the depot? All very suspicious.)  All-in-all, not an auspicious way to go into a bank holiday weekend.