22 Years to impact.

Twenty-Two Years to Impact

Dave

         What if you could stop the world in a split second before your impending death? For example, when you're riding a motorbike and a car is coming at you head-on. Do you go left off the road, fall into a ditch and die? Go right towards the oncoming traffic and die? Or just try to stop, then get run over and die.

     It wasn't my choice. A better rider than me had control. The love of my life Sarah had the handlebars. I trusted her with my life always. It's others I don't trust.

Sarah

              I might as well start when I was born. I swear I was a bad girl in another life or something. When my mum found out she was pregnant,

              My responsible mother smoked three packs a day with me inside her, stunting my growth. To add to that I came out with a red angry birthmark the size of my hand on the left side of my face. I also had wonky teeth and thick glasses. And just when you think that's bad. On poor income and bad nutrition, I didn't grow much and my name? ............. "Sarah Little!" But known to everyone as "Little Sarah"

            I'm from Norwich and I love my city apart from the bit where I grew up in Mile Cross. If the city was a human body, Mile Cross was the asshole after the toilet paper ran out. Living there as a short ass specky four eyes with a huge mark on my face was not always easy. I was a readymade target for bullies and they often got me.

            One day when I was eight, a group of boys, all of whom lived on my street, caught the bullies flushing my head down the toilet in Wensum park. Dave who was in my year at school brought his three older brothers with Charlie and Max. My bullies all tripped over their own shoelaces and fell in the icy river that January.

             For a few years after that things were as good as could be. I think the fact that my stepdad had a motorbike kept me popular. My friends couldn't protect me so much at school but around the estate I was safe. The big group of us included Dave, Charlie, Max, and others a few others.

            We'd hang around together after school riding our bikes or swimming in the river on hot days and making plans for our future. We wanted to get a bike like the one on the cover of Bat out of hell. A song about somebody who dies in a motorbike accident. "Irony"

         I thought it would last forever. But my life changed when my stepdad hit my mum. We ended up having to leave in the night and were taken to a refuge many miles from Norwich with just the clothes on our backs and no time to say goodbye. I was fourteen.

Dave

         September of 1991 around 3 years to impact. I was at work one morning doing my apprenticeship at Morton's Garage in the south of Norwich city centre.

          I was just finishing up an MOT failure on a bike for my boss to sign off, when I caught sight of a small woman pushing a stricken moped towards the reception. She wore a bright pink helmet the same shade as her moped. Rain was pouring out of the sky and the poor woman was drenched.

              I hurried out of the front door and took the other side of the bike and guided her to the MOT bay. The small lady took off her helmet. Her head was covered by a woollen head warmer which covered her face apart from her eyes nose and mouth.

"Before we get to the bike are you okay?" I questioned.

         She smiled weekly taking a clean white hanky from her back pocket. Flapping it open she told me in a gentle voice. "Cold, wet, tired and full of snot." She paused and blew her nose like a kazoo and gave me a little embarrassed smile.