The lorry driver couldn’t come over to us because all of the logs were in the way. His lorry was in the road on its side and he’d only got out because two men had just pulled his entire windscreen off and helped him down from his chair.
‘Who’s the driver?’ he called to us, politely and calmly with concern in his voice.
‘I am,’ I answered, meekly.
‘You’re a fucking wanker, mate!!!’
Yeah, fair play, I’d be angry too; just can’t believe I fell for the old ‘who’s the driver’ trick. That was very crafty pretending to be concerned about my wellbeing then calling me a wanker. Nicely done. I looked down at my hand and saw that I had saved the CeeLo Green album from the wreckage without thinking. I also had ‘Fuck You’ in my head still. We’d sung it so many times that it was now playing on a loop in my brain and it didn’t go away until the next day. The whole time the police were questioning us about the crash I had that damn song in my head and was worried I would accidentally start to sing or hum it with them still within earshot.
Just in case you’re wondering how many car crash stories are in this book, don’t worry, that is the final one. I only had one more near-death experience involving a car, some years later when I had just finished a tour show in Norwich. My friend and tour support Stuart Laws and I got into his car and it refused to start. Eventually Stuart phoned his breakdown company and I went off to buy us some curries to cheer him up. By the time I returned the recovery service man had got the car started but had some instructions for us before we departed. ‘This car will not start again so you must not turn this engine off before you get to where you’re going.’ This was a problem because we only had enough petrol to get us one minute outside of Norwich. When we told the man this he told us we would have to put petrol in the car WHILE THE MOTOR WAS STILL RUNNING. He then led us to a petrol station and stuck around while Stuart filled up the car without turning the engine off. I was worried that the entire petrol station would explode and so to avoid getting hurt I walked to the edge of the forecourt and ate my curry from a ‘safe’ distance. I think my main concern was that I’d chosen a hotter curry than usual and a three-pepper-heat curry might just be the extra catalyst this situation didn’t need. As I ate the curry on the edge of the forecourt watching Stuart bring the nozzle towards his car, I thought to myself, How amazing would it be if after being ridiculously lucky in a car crash that involved a log lorry, I end up going like this. Blown up by my own curry reacting with some volatile petrol while my friend attempts to refuel a running vehicle. But, once again, I somehow made it.
After the car crash, the Welsh gigs were cancelled and I returned to Kettering via train. And here’s a nice little PS to the story: on the way home my train nearly derailed because it hit a falling log. Obviously I like to think it was one of the logs from the log lorry and it’d been rolling constantly ever since the train crash, seeking me out so it could finish the job.
The train shook for a while, then stopped abruptly and then they made an announcement telling us what had happened. But I already knew we’d nearly derailed because I knew what being on a train while it was derailing felt like. Because it had happened to me before.
Derailed
In February of that year I had travelled from London to Leicester with my good friend and colleague Josh Widdicombe. Josh is a great guy and was just coming out of a phase where he forced people to drink Jägerbombs every time they hit the town with him.
Before we’d even left London I remember a young man approaching us. Josh and I were sitting opposite each other on a table for four, the other two seats were empty, and this young man walked up to us with a long cardboard tube under his arm, clearly wanting a chat.
‘All right, lads?’
It was actually quite refreshing to have a stranger say hello; it doesn’t happen enough nowadays. I personally only ever speak to strangers when I’m trying to score condoms off of them. But there was still something a little off about the way he sidled up to us, and he clearly had an agenda.
‘I’ve just been to London!’ he said proudly, which was an odd statement to make because the train left from London and we were still very much in London, therefore one could safely assume that everybody on the train had just been to London. ‘Guess what I was doing there?’ We didn’t know. ‘I was giving a talk on wind energy! I work for a charity, I was trying to get some investors!’ Then he opened the cardboard tube and pulled out a poster that featured loads of pictures of windmills and said, ‘What do you think about that?’
We nodded approvingly. ‘Pretty good,’ we said.
‘You can get loads of wind energy out of them!’ he beamed, and we raised our eyebrows as if we didn’t know that already. ‘Yeah well this is what I’ve been talking to people about so fingers crossed!’ There was an awkward pause and then he went, ‘Well, see ya later!’ then gathered up his poster and sat the other side of the aisle directly across from us. He was a good guy and I love the fact that he said ‘see ya later’ then sat down right next to us.
For an hour there was no problem with the train journey whatsoever. Then there was a sudden jolt and some mild shaking. Then rocks started to fly out from underneath the train. Then the shaking got more intense and the rocks flew higher. Then the rocks started arching over the train and some of them started hitting the train itself and smashing the windows. Then the whole train began to shake extremely vigorously and everyone fell silent. I remember Josh and I both held on to the table with both hands and looked at each other as the train shook and the windows smashed. And then everything stopped. The train stopped moving and we let go.
For a while no one knew what was happening. We were all trying to guess what’d gone wrong. Naturally our friend in wind energy came over to us (by came over to us I mean he stood up and turned to face us) to hazard a guess at what had happened. He kept asking if we had GPS on our phones, as if the train had somehow gone the wrong way and we’d got lost. He was midway through dispensing some bonus wind farm trivia when an announcement was made over the speakers in the carriage. ‘Hello. Just had a bit of problem . . . basically the wheels of the train that keep us on the tracks . . . they’ve fallen out . . . they’ve just fallen off . . . But don’t worry . . . the train is not on fire . . .’ None of us had even asked if the train was on fire! No one was worried about the train being on fire before he said it wasn’t on fire! As soon as he said we are not on fire, all I could think about was that we were definitely on fire! It was at that moment that a lot of us realised we could hear the fire alarm in the background of his announcement. He continued, ‘. . . there is, however, an awful lot of hot oil spewing on to a hot axle.’ Oh great. That sounds bad. Spewing is never good, is it? No one has ever delighted in discovering a spewing something. Take any noun and put spewing before it and it instantly becomes worse, I guarantee it.
So what do you do in order to keep everyone calm if you’ve got an awful lot of hot oil spewing on to a hot axle? Answer – send a lady down the aisle of every single carriage with a packet of Tangfastics. Fizzy gelatin-based sweets. That was the solution. Josh and I were sat right at the end of the carriage so we knew all the good ones would have been snapped up by the time it got to us. We were getting cola bottles and we knew it. The lady with the Tangfastics stopped near us and looked at a smashed window, pointed at it and asked us, ‘When did that happen?’ As if she knew nothing about the derailing and was just handing out Tangfastics because she had some going spare. Maybe she thought the wind energy man had got so carried away talking about wind energy that he had attempted to smash all the windows, thus allowing wind to rush freely through the carriage in order to illustrate his point even further. I like picturing him stood on a table, wind whooshing through the smashed glass, shouting, ‘Think of the benefits!!!!’
We were stationary for three hours while we waited for a rescue train to arrive. And by the time said rescue train arrived it was very dark. This meant the train staff weren’t legally allowe
d to evacuate us without the fire brigade present so we had to wait another hour for the fire brigade to arrive. And once the fire brigade had arrived, the train staff and the firemen had an hour-long disagreement about what side of the train to evacuate us on. And then, after five hours of sitting on a broken train, we were ready to get on to the rescue train that had arrived two hours ago. I know – bloody red tape.
The firemen were standing in two lines facing each other. The lines started either side of the door to our train and led round to the door of the rescue train. All the firemen were pointing their torches at the ground so we could follow the path of light to safety. While I was walking along the path of light, one patch of torchlight suddenly disappeared and shone on the face of another fireman.
‘Phil? Is that you? I didn’t know you were in today!’ said the fireman holding the torch.
‘Yeah, got called in last minute,’ said Phil, blinking in the light.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t find this easily distracted fireman in the slightest bit reassuring. If they all started recognising the person standing opposite them I’d be lost in a blizzard of moving torchlight and probably stumble into a badger sett and twist up my ankle. So I stepped over the patch of darkness where his light used to be, just to be on the safe side.
On board the rescue train the buffet carriage was free and everyone was taking full advantage of it. One of the saddest sights I have ever witnessed is a man getting himself a free can of Stella from the rescue train buffet; then turning round and holding it up to his wife, who was sat at the far end of the carriage, and silently celebrating with the can as if everything had now been worth it. The five-hour delay and being involved in a derailing had all paid off because he had managed to get a single can of free lager out of the whole ordeal. This attitude only exists in Great Britain. We will forgive all manners of inconvenience if we end up with some free food and drink at the end, especially if it’s booze. We’re the first to complain and yet the easiest to trick out of formally complaining. Personally, I stocked up on marble cake and never contacted the train company asking for a refund.
Paris
After the car crash in Wales we took some time off from the tour. Josie cancelled the Welsh leg and we all recuperated separately for about a week before resuming the tour again, in Paris of all places. Johnny was unable to come so the plan was and for just Josie and I to do one gig, stay in a hotel overnight and then go home. We arrived early in the day so that we could take in as much of the city as possible (because I treat Paris the same way I treat Andover.)
One of my biggest phobias in life (number two actually, just underneath singing in public) is trying to speak other languages. Every time I try and speak another language in another country I completely freeze up and lose confidence and feel dreadful. When we were in France, I relied on Josie at every turn. Josie definitely seemed to enjoy speaking French more than I did and people understood her much more than they understood me when I mumbled something vaguely French to them in a Kettering accent. I clung to her all day long and was left alone once for about seven minutes, during which time I managed to mess up in a way that surprised even myself.
Josie wanted to look in an ‘everything for a euro’ shop but instead of browsing along with her I opted to wait outside like a cool kid. I was not alone, however, for next to me there was a big dog. The big dog looked like a six foot man in a dog costume tied to a post and was looking happily at everyone who walked past. I think the lady who dressed as a dog at the Fell Foot Sound festival had been paying homage to this actual dog, that’s how much it looked like a human in fancy dress. It had big shaggy white hair and a fringe that covered its eyes. It looked hilarious, no two ways about it. Everyone who went past that dog laughed out loud. One or two people would laugh at the dog and then make a comment, in French, to me about the dog, in a manner that made me suspect they thought the dog belonged to me. Every time this happened I would laugh back, nod and say ‘Oui’ because I had no idea what was being said to me but I knew that I agreed the dog was the funniest dog in all of France so ‘Oui’ seemed like a pretty safe bet.
One guy could not get enough of the big dog. He stopped, did a double take, laughed, walked away, returned again, pointing, laughing, looking up at me and gesturing towards the dog in disbelief, shaking his head, grinning constantly, completely agog. He then said a bunch of stuff to me about the dog while pointing at it so I did my stock response and laughed and said ‘Oui’. As I said ‘Oui’ a passing lady stopped in her tracks and narrowed her eyes at me and the laughing man. She looked appalled. The laughing man stopped laughing and returned her glare with a look that said What’s your problem? And then she launched into a full-on angry rant in French, all of which was aimed directly at the two of us, including loads of finger-wagging and head-shaking, sometimes pointing at the big dog then back to us again with more ferocity than before.
The size of the French dog compared to a yellow W
What on earth had I agreed to? This man seemed harmless enough but I suddenly started to fear that I had just agreed to either eating or, worse still, having sex with the big dog. I know that’s disgusting but that’s where your mind goes when you’re currently being scolded in a foreign language and have no idea what for. You instantly think you must’ve condoned bestiality out loud on the streets of Paris. And if this man was the sort of awful human being who suggests such things to strangers he now felt well and truly emboldened because as far as he was concerned he had found himself an ally. He was no longer alone. I suspect that usually he suggests these taboo ideas to total strangers and they tell him to get lost but today he had found someone as laid back and unorthodox as he was, a kindred spirit, and this angry lady could get stuffed if she’s not on board. Throughout the bollocking he would look over at me and roll his eyes, gesturing towards the woman with his thumb as if to say, ‘She doesn’t get us, man.’ This had always been my biggest fear when it came to speaking another language, saying the wrong thing and then the situation quickly escalating into something I didn’t understand. All I had said was ‘Oui’. That’s the first word you learn in French class and it had landed me in a world of merde (the second word you learn in French class).
I kept looking back at the shop hoping that Josie would return but there was no sign of her. There must’ve been so many amazing things available for one euro in that shop and she was lost among the glorious bargains. Maybe she’d found Ceelo Green’s entire back catalogue in there for just one euro and was buying it for me as a present. Or maybe I was just telling myself that to distract from the fact I was about to be put on some sort of French register. The angry lady was still telling us off and showing no signs of stopping so my partner in crime made a dismissive gesture towards her and walked away, leaving me to receive the remainder of the dressing down on my own. Eventually she stopped yelling, maybe deciding there was no point now that the ringleader was gone and I was clearly a good kid who’d just fallen in with the wrong crowd. So she shook her head at me, looked at the big dog (I swear she nearly laughed when she looked at it; even after all that angry shouting the sight of that dog was still funny) and stomped off down the street. It was at this point that an old woman emerged from the euro shop, untied the dog and walked off with it. Then, once the big dog had completely disappeared from view, Josie also emerged from the shop and I had to tell her what had happened in the few minutes since she’d last seen me, despite the fact that all of the key characters were nowhere to be seen. I left out my theories about what I thought the man had said to me for fear of sounding ridiculous but once I’d finished the story, Josie thought about it, nodded and said, ‘He probably said, “You and me should bang this dog.”’ It was nice to feel understood again.
I would like to point out that I like dogs and would never do anything to harm one even out of awkward politeness due to a misunderstanding with a Frenchman. In fact, growing up, my family owned a miniature sausage dog and one day I saved its life.
I used
to own a green and white puffer jacket. It was my favourite jacket and I received many a compliment on it. One day I had returned home from school, taken the jacket off and thrown it on the floor before practising the drums for an hour. During drum practice I paused to hear wheezing coming from the living room. I popped my head in to investigate and saw that the family sausage dog had crawled into one of the arms of my puffer jacket and was now stuck with her head sticking out the end where the hand would be and her tail pointing out the other like an antenna. She clearly was not enjoying the experience and was having trouble breathing so I went to get her out of the puffer. But as soon as I tried to reach inside I realised two things. The first was that in her panic she had urinated all over the jacket and the second was that the jacket had now formed a vacuum seal around her body and it was impossible to get my fingers inside in order to pull her out of there.
Her wheezing got louder and so I had to think fast. I ran into the kitchen, grabbed a pair of scissors from the drawer, ran back into the living room and cut her out of the jacket without hesitation. OK, there was a moment of hesitation where I thought, Hold on, this is my favourite jacket but I knew I couldn’t risk it and decided the puffer jacket and I had had a good run. Farewell my green and white friend, family comes first.
A sausage dog stuck in the sleeve of a discarded jacket
As soon as she was free my dog skipped away without seeming either grateful or relieved, just frolicked off like nothing had happened. When my family returned home I recounted the tale to them, expecting to be declared a hero and receive adulation and gratitude for saving the family pet. Instead they told me that I probably overreacted and my mum was disappointed that I’d thrown my coat on the floor instead of hanging it up. And so, as revenge, I decided to bide my time and then, when she was least expecting it, I ate all of her wild strawberries (I can’t even joke about that actually. Oh man, I still feel awful about gulping them.)
James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes Page 18
