The Truck [3] | Newry Journal

It seemed like all hell was breaking loose: our load had obviously dislodged and the air was full of the sound of breaking glass. There seemed to be boxes and crates raining down everywhere.

After hitting the windscreen I must have been rendered unconscious momentarily. I remember Brian shaking my arm and saying,

‘Are you ok?’

After the terrible noise of breaking glass and rending metal of those previous moments, everything now sounded so peaceful. The only sound seemed to be the dripping of liquid from somewhere, perhaps from our smashed radiator, or from the broken bottles of beer that had once formed our load. It’s funny what the mind takes in at times like that.

‘You had better climb out my side,’ said Brian,

‘There’s no chance of you getting that door on your side open’.

So with great difficulty I managed to climb across the cab and make my exit through the driver’s door. Because of the angle of the truck, that door was then above my head so I literally mean I climbed out.

Once we got clear of the truck I was able to survey the damage. What a mess! The old lorry was nose-down in the ditch and lying over on her side, so much so that her rear offside wheel was clear off the ground. There were crates and bottles scattered all over the place, some on the roadway, but most of them thankfully in the ditch at the side of the road. A lot of the bottles had been broken, disgorging their liquid contents all over the ground. Foaming pools of Guinness competed with the amber-coloured discharge from the Lager Beer as to which of them could create the greater mess.

Brian and I looked at the whole sorry sight with perplexity.

What were we to do now?

How were we to clear this up?