SIGNS ACROSS THE Divide
Ilive in a very remote rural area, where there are no buses or trains. One morning, my husband and I were driving into town when we saw one of the local characters at the side of the road.
With her vivid dyed red hair, she was instantly recognisable.
In spite of being in her eighties, she’d ride round the narrow lanes on a bicycle of similar vintage to herself!
On the day in question, the bike was propped against the hedge, and the old lady was standing by it, dithering. She looked relieved at our approach, and waved her DUPV WR ÀDJ us down.
Red glow
It was an unusually bright and sunny morning, and for a moment I saw the woman with the sun behind her, shining through her hair.
‘Her hair’s as red as blood!’ I remarked to my husband.
We stopped and asked her what was wrong.
‘My bicycle’s got a puncture,’ she sighed. We suggested that we gave her a lift into town, where one of her friends could help her solve the problem of the bike, and she happily accepted the R HU
We were in a two-door car, so to make it easier for her, I got out, tipped the passenger seat forward and got into the back seat so that she could sit in the front. She put one leg into the car – then took it straight out again.
Change of heart
‘I’m awfully sorry, I’ve changed my mind about the lift,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait until someone else comes along.’ ‘Oh, right,’ I said, taken aback. ‘That was a bit rude,’ my husband said as we drove away. It’s not as if we were complete strangers, so it seemed really odd that she’d waved us down, had seemed perfectly happy with the LGHD RI WKH OLIW DW ¿UVW WKHQ changed her mind so abruptly.
‘Maybe she thinks we’re serial killers,’ I joked, although I felt rather hurt.
Then, completely out of the blue, my husband lost control of WKH FDU ,W ÀHZ R WKH URDG somersaulted three or four times before coming to a halt, the right way up, in a bog.
‘Are you OK?’ my husband gasped in horror. ‘Your hair’s red with blood!’
‘I-I think so,’ I replied, gingerly touching my head. The windscreen had smashed and I’d cut my scalp and it was bleeding a lot as scalp injuries do, but I didn’t think I was badly hurt.
7KH FDU ZDV D ZULWH R EXW thankfully - almost miraculously - there were no bones broken, and we lived to tell the tale.
But we couldn’t help remembering the old lady, and wondering again why she’d had such a sudden and unexpected change of heart about accepting a lift with us. Being a good 30 years older than we were, she might not have survived such a trauma. We might be wrong, but we’re both convinced that she must have had a strong last-minute sense of the impending danger - and an equally strong instinct for survival!
The car spun out of control