The openimg bars of my autobiography - interesting for me to note (from reading it) that I wrote these words 10 years ago when I was 55, - my mum was still alive ( she died last year) - and my Dad had died only five years earlier. And when I finish it I guess Ill have to go back and correct those bits. Ive written up to half way through my life so far, and not another word have I written in the last few years. Maybe I need a publisher to give me a deadline!!!! Deadlines, I love em. It means someone wants something from you! _____________________________ Sixty miles an hour into a concrete block on a lonely Spanish mountain road at six thirty one dark morning was not the way I had planned to leave this world. Not that you plan to go any particular way, - but as I looked up from the back seat of the people carrier to see that it was plunging off the road, the possibility that these would be my last moments flashed through my mind. I shall always remember the heavy, final crunch, the jolt, the sensation of stopping instantly, the violence of it, the shocking pain in my neck. Someone was screaming with agony in a deep, rhythmical, unworldly voice and I suddenly realised it was me. Damn. Shit. The video shoot we were travelling to and which I should be directing would now be cancelled. Bollocks. I suppose you don’t think straight, you just focus on what’s first in your mind. You don’t think you have a broken neck. You don’t think you are so close to instant death if that last remaining millimetre of your C2 vertebra snaps because of a sudden movement. And they take you to hospital in a bus with the word “ambulance” written on the side, because they haven’t got actual ambulances in the mountains of Spain, or didn’t on that morning. There were other people hurt, too. The oboist in the band was knocked unconscious and had bad lacerations on face and legs. Our cameraman, Roger McDonald had three broken ribs and a punctured lung. Then, later, I’m lying in the local hospital and they’ve finally sussed that I’ll die if I move, so my wife Julianne is whispering in my ear about how there is a negotiation going on with the health insurance people and that Peter Ryan, my doctor in London is insisting I should not be moved under any circumstances. Eventually I am moved, with his approval, by special care ambulance to Madrid. On the way, to protect me from jolting, I’m hanging in a sort of floating stretcher and being cuddled by an attractive nurse with big friendly tits as I am rather pleasantly but precariously transported to Madrid, - a journey of about ninety minutes. Later, they will fit me with a halo brace by screwing it into my scull at four points. It’s a contraption I’ll have to wear for four months, twenty-four hours a day. More about that later. It was three years ago and I didn’t die. If I had, my life would have been shorter and this story wouldn’t have been written. People ask if it changed my life, the fact that I nearly died bit didn’t. I don’t know. It probably did, but it wasn’t the road to Damascus. I’ve always been aware of our transient existence, always been grateful for each moment. Life’s like a party where your Dad is going to come and take you home but you don’t want him to come just yet. It’s a life that started in Southampton fifty-five years ago in 1949. My Dad was Norman Frederick Batt, my Mum was Elaine Jennings, and two more different people you couldn’t hope to meet. He was an ex- wartime army officer (but stayed in the TA after the war), - athlete, mechanical, electrical, professional civil engineer. Brilliant man, died five years ago, and I miss him every day. Always did his own electrical and plumbing work, hell of a temper, great sense of humour. She was (still is) a dotty, wacky, former athletic PE and art teacher with a superb theatrical streak and the ability to make fantastic toys, clothes, dressing up outfits and eventually, Womble costumes. From this odd couple, I learned to be whoever I am.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 22:58:35 +0000
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