Car-eening
You might think that some of Bill Reyner’s escapades are a little far fetched. No, not really. His car accidents for instance, yes I’ve been there in every one. Once I end-over-ended a French Peugeot. Unfortunately it was on a hill and the car tried to make like a golf ball in the rough. Backwards, end-over-end she descended the hill with me clinging onto the steering column for dear life. At the bottom of the hill it stopped and a very dizzy and disoriented driver sat up to discover the car had landed the right way up, no windows, no doors, rear cab roof crushed flat one road wheel missing, no lights, battery or fuel tank. Climbing out I looked back up the hill and saw a trail of debris reminiscent of an airplane crash. My only injuries were a very bruised back and a severely bruised knee.
Another time as passenger we went off a curve in a military truck at just over 75 miles per hour. I remember the edge marker posts bursting off the front of the vehicle like machine gun bullets. We slipped into the ditch and ended up at a tree that stubbornly refused to move. The front of the vehicle buckled and the front window exploded. Again I staggered out, the only member of the three man crew able to walk. Talking of military vehicles reminds me of the time I was driving an armoured car in Africa coming down a fairly steep and long hill the brakes suddenly failed. Oh boy! Fortunately I had two things in my favour, one; I had been trained to drive properly and two; the gears were manual. Remembering the drill I popped the clutch raced the motor and jammed it into a lower gear. As my heart raced and the bottom of the hill came closer and closer I did it another three times. Fortunately the gearbox took the punishment and I reached the bottom at only thirty miles an hour. The most amusing was when I was in Africa. At a little shop in Ruiru One of the lads thought it would be a grand idea to buy 5 pounds of Chinese Crackers. For fun we would light one and toss it at a local African as we passed. (I know, hooliganism.) But the laugh was on us. I sat next to the driver with the bag of fireworks on my lap, Tony the driver was the instigator and had the most fun. I would break one off and hand it to him; he lit it with his cigarette and gleefully tossed it out his open window. This particular time the fuse snapped off and still alight blew back into the car, landing in the bag that was on my knee. I looked in with the intension of retrieving it but all I saw was a mass of fire. In panic I handed the bag to the policeman sitting behind me. It was at that time the world ended. In an instant the car was filled with fire and explosions and choking smoke. All I can say is – we all survived.
