I spent two days in Selkirk catching up with relatives, and found out that my mother, Jan, who was married to a great guy from Blenheim, New Zealand, was in London, in charge of a 70 foot, 70 ton launch. I hadn’t seen Mother for years, or really known where she was, other than having missed them when they were running a schooner—the Golden Cachatote—between Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the Galapagos Islands. They were now berthed at Hammersmith Pier, on the river Thames, awaiting generator repairs.
Another fellow student from design school, Heather, was in Leeds, so while the weather was good, I repaired a puncture and went back on the road again, through great border country to Leeds. Heather wasn’t there, as she had to go to Europe on TV or movie business, but her friends entertained me for the evening.
I called in to Coventry to see a man at the Meriden Triumph motorcycle factory, and then took off to Dunlop in Birmingham, as instructed, where I was told that I’d need to go to London to get new tyres fitted. At least the front tyre, a Dunlop K81, refused to wear out and never had a puncture.
A brand new section of the M6 motorway between Birmingham and Coventry just opened, and I was riding it on a very misty morning, when—“Bang!”—lights out. A truck jack-knifed in the fog and the rear swung into my lane, leaving my bike in the middle lane and me in the fast lane.
I remember looking down at two ambulance men working on a body behind their vehicle. Next, I was conscious, and was told that I was hit by a truck, and they were putting my shoulder back into place. Then blank again, to wake up another day.
After 18 days I was back in the land of the living, with no voice, a chipped shoulder, and being very well looked after. I got to know a very nice and friendly staff nurse, Julie. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to get more blood for me when the doctors had given up. I think she might have taken a bit of a fancy to me—probably because I had no voice, or because I had to whisper in her ear to communicate.
Because I could stay on the boat with Mother and Bob while repairs were being done, I was discharged after 23 days in the hospital. This was much to the surprise and disgust of the others in the ward, with their long-term injuries—broken bones, skin grafts, bullet wounds, etc. They watched me come in with no hope, get shoved into the room with the dead and dying on click-clack ventilators, and then get discharged first. I couldn’t argue with them; I still had no voice.
Mother and Bob took me to their motor yacht Raenie, a 70 foot, 70 ton floating cocktail cabinette. It was moored at Hammersmith Pier, right next to King Henry 8th’s favorite pub, The Dove. Bob was the skipper, Mother the cook. There was an engineer, John, a pom with glasses so thick you couldn’t see through them, and me, with my left arm in a sling and no voice. I cleaned a lot of windows, drank a few beers, and got a visit from the staff nurse, Julie, who had arranged a place for the two of us to stay in Coventry while I recovered. I’d be able to get the bike back on the road and attend hospital appointments.