As easy as falling off a bike

If things had turned out a little bit differently a few weeks ago, you could have already read the last ever Kerr's Corner last month.  On the Sunday before Christmas, I had just returned home from a pleasant weekend in a Co Down cottage with members of my wider family. 

  Checking on my two cats, I realised that they were a bit low on litter and food, so I thought that I would nip down quickly to the local Co-op and stock up before they closed.  I was due to read one of the lessons in a carol service later in the evening, so I decided to take the bike rather than walk to the shop.  Big mistake!

  It wasn't quite dark, but I nevertheless put on my lights. I made a successful right turn from Lawnbrook Avenue on to the main Shankill Road.  However, the pelican crossing below the junction of the Shankill Road, Lawnbrook Avenue and Tennent Street had turned to red, stopping all cars coming up the road.  The driver of a small hatchback car wanting to turn right up the Shankill saw his opportunity to get out quickly.  Unfortunately he didn't see me!

  The old cliché about time seeming to stand still in such situations really does prove to be true.  The car driver didn't see me but I saw him.  The street I had come out from isn't quite opposite the car driver's street.  It is offset by a few metres so I had already straightened up but not full turned my head forward.  I realised that the car driver was still coming out. He hadn't seen me. He was going to hit me.

  I have been cycling back and forward to work for more than 25 years but never been in this kind of accident before. It was truly terrifying, yet in the strange slow motion world around me I still had the presence of mind to kick the bike away, roll and hope for the best.

  The bike went under the wheels of the car. I rolled over the bonnet and ended up on the road. As the pelican crossing was still red, no other vehicles had the opportunity to run over me as I lay there.  I was down but not out: a bit bruised and battered but able to stand and hobble home in need of a good cup of tea. 

  This could have been a lot nastier. I was wearing a good stout pair of boots. Had I been wearing trainers instead, I expect I'd have broken my ankle.  Even worse, it could have been me under the wheels or a following car could have finished me off. Providentially I am still here to tell the tale and I did manage to get to the church in time to read that lesson.