The positive side of thinking you are about to die is that it does make you glad of the little life that is left to you. Blood was pooling inside my head, like a slowly filling bath, and at some point soon my eyes would roll upwards, I would issue a dull groan, and quietly tip over, never to rise again. But then, because I am a little paranoid and given to private histrionics, I became convinced that I had in fact sustained grave internal injuries, which had not yet revealed themselves. It seemed impossible that I could have survived such a violent blow.
As I sat there, another car passed through and the barrier fell back into place with a rever- berating clang. A kindly lady helped me to a bench and gave me a square of chocolate, which I found I was still clutching the next morning. For the next several minutes my walking was, for the most part, involuntarily sideways. My legs buckled and folded beneath me and my arms grew so independently lively that I managed to smack myself in the face with my elbows. Suddenly I was both the most bewildered and relaxed person in France. Well, I have never been hit so startlingly and hard. This was the moment that I chose to step forward and to stand considering my next move, little realizing that it would be mostly downwards. As I stood hesitating, a car pulled up, the driver took a ticket, the barrier rose and the driver drove on through. I was alone at this point, however, trying to find my way to a clifftop path at the far side of the car park, but the way was blocked by the barrier, which was too low for a man of my dimensions to duck under and much too high to vault. The venue for this adventure in cranial trauma was an open-air car park in a pleasant coastal resort in Normandy called Etretat, not far from Deauville, where my wife and I had gone for a few days. Let me say right now that this was a serious barrier – like a scaffolding pole with momentum – and it didn’t so much fall as crash back into its cradle. The other method – and this is where a little diminished mental capacity can go a long way – is to forget the barrier you have just seen rise, step into the space it has vacated and stand with lips pursed while considering your next move, and then be taken completely by surprise as it slams down on your head like a sledgehammer on a spike.
One is to stand underneath a raised barrier and purposely allow it to fall on you. There are really only two ways to get hit on the head by a parking barrier. Recently, in France, I was hit square on the head by an automatic parking barrier, something I don’t think I could have managed in my younger, more alert years.
One of the things that happens when you get older is that you discover lots of new ways to hurt yourself.
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