How To Crash A Motorbike

I’m lying trapped under 250kg of crashed motorbike and for a second, time stands still; as it must at such moments. There is a lane of traffic on either side of me, now separated by streak of scorched gravel — and both sides have stopped; the drivers staring and struck dumb. I could be dead, although I’m not.

There’s a Kawasaki 550 LTD lying on top of me and it weighs at least triple what I do. I can’t move and my stupidly contorted leg on which most of the bike lies is getting steadily more uncomfortable under the scratched metal and its scorching exhausts. It should be broken, but it’s not.

Pale faces gurn from static car windows and no one moves. The ones I can see are scared; it must have looked ugly — a skid six cars long as I tried to bring her under control and the machine bucking over, with the man once proudly on top now cowed and comatose underneath.

Someone appears. A man with a flabby face. He looks down at me and doesn’t know what to do. I look up at him and for some reason feel profoundly apologetic.

“I guess that’s what happens when you ride like a total twat.”

I’m gabbling more chirpily than the situation demands, eyes twisting upwards from the tarmac. He stands there, frozen, looking shocked down at me from the central strip as the cars clutch the road on both sides motionless and the drivers stare.

“Could you pull the bike off me please?” I ask politely, wondering if this is how things are normally done. The question seems to catapult him into action and his sudden, shufflingly indecisive movements inspire a flurry of car doors to open.

Three big men emerge and look at me for a moment, wondering if I’ve broken my leg or back and what to do. I’m lying crushed under a crashed motorbike in the middle of the road and time is standing still. Nobody has called an ambulance yet. Five seconds may have passed. It feels like an hour. I repeat my apology.

“Not your fault mate…” one of them says shakily and they continue to stare.

There is a python of concrete swept through the gravel, snaking along behind the beast of my bike; the slick swoosh of a machine coming to earth, a runway to the arrivals lounge, where sand fills your eyes and you wonder what has broken and whether you can stand up. I repeat my request again, as politely as I can.

They haul the machine off me. My calf is contorted, cramped and in pain but I can feel the leg’s neither critically cut nor broken. I’m not wearing gloves and miraculously there is not a scratch on my hands, which gripped on all the way down as the bike decided which side to fall. I gingerly stand up and put the seat back on. It’s flipped right off and cables emerge in a trellis of accident.

The three men are still holding my bike and looking at me and I climb on thanking them as they hold it, incredulous. It’s less than 500 yards to my destination of ASDA, where I have a mission to buy cornflakes, milk, chicken and bread. If there are four worldly items worth dying for it is probably not those.

The bike stutters back into life, my knee is dribbling blood and I’m moving; though time somehow still is not. I thank the faces again and ease down the side of the traffic – still stationary and staring and make my way to the supermarket. The cramp has gone by the wine aisle and the moment has become an anecdote rehearsed between the chicken and the crumpets.

I buy strawberries and cream and climb back on the bike. People are waiting for me at home. People are waiting and I’m meant to be cooking dinner.

The roads are a river again.