You’re reading Home Truths, a newsletter from me, Susy Smith. I am many things: a parent of grown-up kids, a dog owner, a gardener and a compulsive mover of vases (I worked for years as a stylist). I am also a writer/editor and former Editor-in-Chief of British Country Living Magazine, for whom I still write a monthly column.
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The 300 year old Dark Hedges at Ballymoney, N.Ireland. Photo by Fabrício Severo on Unsplash
It’s taken me a long time to write this piece. To be honest I wasn’t sure if I should – or could. But I decided it might exorcise some demons for me and allow me to move on – at least a bit. As I explained in my holding message to you on September 25th, my twin daughters and I were involved in a serious car accident whilst on holiday in Northern Ireland and we are still in recovery. In some ways I’d like to try to bury what happened but in others it is cathartic to talk about it so I can process it.
The girls have been to my homeland with me before, but they were very young and don’t remember much about the visits. They are now 24 and in recent years, it has felt increasingly important to me to share my history with them: to show them the house and street where I grew up, the school I went to, the streets in the centre of Belfast that were blocked off by tall security gates and manned by armed soldiers 24 hours a day.
The place is very different now but drive to any of the Protestant or Catholic strong-holds and the murals tell you much of what you need to know. These days black taxis and an open top bus tour take visitors into areas that I would never have ventured to as a teenager – they were just too dangerous. I wanted to try to explain to my daughters what it was like to grow up in what was essentially a war zone and the effect that had on me and others who lived through the 30 years of The Troubles.
I wanted to show them the good things too: the wonderful Antrim coast with the Giant’s Causeway and the terrifying Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge near Ballintoy where you can cross the 20 metre span from the mainland to the tiny island opposite whilst trying to avert your eyes from the 30 metre drop to the sea crashing onto the jagged rocks below, simply just to scare the pants off yourself! There have been instances where, having crossed over, people are too scared to return and have to be taken off the island by boat. The original bridge was built in 1755 by salmon fishermen and has been replaced several times over the years. The site is now owned and maintained by the National Trust, so I take the view that the bridge can’t be that dangerous……..?
The Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge. Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
I had hoped to take my girls to visit the Dark Hedges – the avenue of fantastic, 300 year old, gnarled and twisted beech trees, planted by the Stuart family in the 18th century, that line the Bregagh Road near Ballymoney and are one of the many locations in Ireland made famous by the TV series Game of Thrones.
I wanted to take them to the Titanic Exhibition created in the Harland and Wolff ship yards around the two iconic yellow cranes of Samson and Goliath that dominate the skyline in Belfast and were one of the first things I would see on leaving my home each day when growing up. Local people understand the irony of creating a tourist attraction that celebrates a ship that sank on its first voyage killing the majority of the 2,240 passengers and crew on board, but the whole experience has been brilliantly conceived and executed.
When I lived in Belfast it was a sorry and run-down place with little to celebrate and the landmark that was pointed out most to the few visitors that came to the town was the Europa Hotel, that bore the unwelcome distinction of being the “most bombed hotel in Europe”. There was really nothing sophisticated about the place at all.
These days it has good restaurants and bars and one of the best is right opposite the Europa. The Crown Liquor Saloon in Belfast’s Great Victoria Street was built in 1826 as one of the Victorian Gin Palaces that once flourished in the industrial cities of Britain. It still functions as a pub today and has been wonderfully restored, preserved and maintained by the National Trust. It’s another must-see on the tourist trail. Highly decorative tiles, mosaics and wood carvings are everywhere and the elaborately etched and stained glass windows are decorated with images of shells, fairies, pineapples, fleurs-de-lis and clowns.
The Crown Bar in Belfast. Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
It still has its original gas lighting and a heated footrest beneath the red granite-topped bar but my favourite feature is the ten cosy and elaborately carved wooden snugs, lettered from A to J. In these snugs are gunmetal plates for striking matches and an antique bell system, which, in the past, alerted bar staff to attend to the occupants’ requirements for liquid refreshment. One can settle down here with a pint of Guinness, hidden from the hoi polloi and read the paper in peace, feeling just that little bit more special than the folk lining the bar.
I wanted to take them to see the caravan site on the east coats of the Ards Peninsula where my sister and I spent all our childhood summers between the ages of five and fourteen. And this we did manage to achieve. Amazingly, the site has barely changed. They’ve built a toilet block but that’s about it. It is still a field by a small beach and rocky foreshore across the road from a farm that, judging by the sign, is still run by the same family that my father rented his pitch from over 50 years ago. I sent my sister a photo of the rockpool where we used to go crabbing with hordes of other kids and bring back buckets filled with variously coloured crustations, trumpet fish, shrimps and a variety of other sea creatures to show off proudly to our parents, before they made us take them back and tip them into the sea when the tide came in.
My daughters and I had spent a happy day. We drove back via the pretty village of Killyleagh, one of the places referenced by Van Morrison in his poetic song “Coney Island”. It was on the country road from Killyleagh back to Belfast that our whole day changed. My dear friend Jill – who we were staying with, was driving. This had not been the plan. I was supposed to collect a hire car on arriving at the airport that morning, but when I went to the desk it was pointed out that my licence had expired – a week before. I had no idea. And so, no car was forthcoming. What were we to do? Many of the intended locations on our trip could not be reached by any method other than driving.
Jill’s husband Tom – who I have known since we were both 12, came to the airport to collect us and drove us back to the house where Jill was serving up an Ulster Fry, the must-have fortification for a busy day of sight-seeing. “Don’t worry” said Jill, with typical kindness, “I have freed up my diary for your visit and am really happy to drive you around in our car”. And so, off we went, me in the front passenger seat and my two girls in the back. The weather was pretty good for Northern Ireland and Jill was an excellent tour guide having lived there all her life whereas I left in my early twenties and don’t really know my way around the place any more.
We had all had a great time and were looking forward to a meal out that evening when we would fill Tom in on how we’d spent our day. I’m not going to go into detail about the accident because, to be honest, it all took place so quickly, it’s hard to tell exactly what happened. Sufficient to say, we hit another car and the front of the car we were travelling in completely concertinaed right back to where Jill and were sitting. As we crashed to a halt, the seatbelts tightened and the airbags went off with incredible force.
Jill hit her head on the steering wheel and was concussed. I had pain across my hips, abdomen and chest where the seat belt had sliced across me. My daughter Connie was thrown forward and hit her face on Jill’s headrest. The worst moment was hearing Connie screaming “Hattie! Hattie!” to her sister and not knowing what was wrong. I couldn’t turn round in my seat, nor could I get my door open.
When I eventually managed to force the door wide enough to clamber out, Jill and Connie were both out of the car. I got to Hattie to find her arching her back and grimacing in pain. All the colour had drained from her face. “It’s my back” she said trying to get out of the car. I told her to stay where she was until an ambulance arrived. People from two houses nearby brought us chairs and water while we waited for medics to arrive. The driver of the other car had also managed to get out of his vehicle and was staring in disbelief at the mangled metal in front of him. We were all in complete shock.
When the ambulance crews arrived, they dealt with Hattie first. She could, thankfully, still feel her legs and feet and they kept testing her reflexes. They had to call the fire brigade to cut the door off to get her out of the car and onto a spinal board with blocks either side of her head to stop her from moving. Eventually, once we had all been assessed, two ambulances took us to A&E while the police took photographs of the two wrecked cars.
Jill was kept in for a couple of days because of the concussion. Connie discharged herself almost as soon as we got to the hospital as she was pretty sure she was just bruised and she wanted to stay with her sister. I was also on a spinal board with blocks and lay staring at ceiling tiles for hours, high on morphine and unable to tell what was going on until Connie would come and explain. Jill’s eldest daughter was moving around the hospital talking to each of us in turn and dispensing water, smiles and encouragement. Hattie and I were each taken for scans and x rays and returned to A&E. They eventually wheeled my bed over next to Hattie so I could hold her hand.
Early the next morning they discharged me with a pack of Co-codamol and told me I would be in a lot of pain for quite a while but there was nothing they could do. It was two weeks later when the hospital rang me and confirmed my x-rays showed I had chipped a piece of bone off my pelvis and fractured my sternum. That explained the pain that stopped me from breathing properly and that returned every couple of hours despite the pain killers.
Hattie came off worst. She had fractured a vertebrae in her lower back – she needed surgery to insert pins into her spine. The most awful time was the 24 hours she was kept in A&E, still in immense pain as they wouldn’t give her morphine, still on a spinal board, unable to move and waiting to be transferred to the spinal unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital where years of dealing with victims from the Troubles has turned them into experts at all sorts of trauma injuries. A&E had effectively discharged her to Orthopaedics, who were waiting to hear if there was a bed to move her to. We just had to wait it out, both of us in tears and me wishing I could take her place.
Once she got to the specialist unit at the Royal, she was put on a special bed, dosed up with pain killers and made much more comfortable. They operated on her three days later and had her out of bed the day after walking on crutches. Happy that all had gone well, they said we could fly within a couple of days provided she could cope with the pain. So, we booked a flight and arrived back at Heathrow 8 days after we’d left, our lives changed by a shocking and unforeseen event, but glad to be home and beginning our recuperation.
Eight weeks on, my bruising and pain have gone. I haven’t driven yet and feel wary of it. I’m in therapy. Hattie still uses crutches when she goes out but can walk around the house without them. She has a scar about 6 inches long on her back and is having regular physio. They reckon she will be back to normal in a couple of months. She has been remarkably pragmatic about the whole experience and has never said “Why me?” Connie was emotionally rather than physically traumatised and may need therapy.
Jill’s back is still painful, she has a swollen knee and as a result of this fell down the stairs at home and dislocated her hip. She can’t sleep properly, won’t get into a car and blames herself for the accident even though we, and many others have tried to tell her it was just one of those things, a bad luck event. The other driver is, so far as I understand it, physically fine but also very troubled by the whole experience. The police say no one is pressing charges. We are, they tell us, incredibly lucky. They have seen similar accidents where the outcome was much, much worse.
As with anything like this, one’s brain revolves with what ifs: What if my licence hadn’t expired and I’d been able to collect our hire car? What if we hadn’t taken that road back towards home and instead driven a different route? What if we’d been two minutes earlier or two minutes later at that junction and the other car would not have been there? And so on and so on.
Jill says she is the same. She was, she said, feeling incredibly happy that afternoon. She was getting to know my girls, had spent a jolly day in the fresh air and all seemed well with the world. She cannot believe it ended as it did. But such is life.
We never know how close we are to disaster or even death. We are rarely aware of the missed opportunities or the lucky escapes that slip silently past us without even being caught in the corner of an eye. A chance encounter, a coming together of events can change everything in a moment.
I feel fortunate that we are all still here and relatively OK. Our wounds, both physical and mental will heal. And we shall, when the time is right, go back to Belfast to complete my sentimental journey, so my daughters can understand more about who I am and why.
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Such a dreadful accident you have experienced! I hope you all will have a speedy recovery. I am happy you are back with your newsletters.
Thank you for writing this. I hope it helped you, and I’m sure it helped others.
I think I’m a similar age to you and have been intending to show my daughters (not twins!) where I grew up. I am now going to arrange it for sure.
Your article made me realise I look back quite a bit, not a bad thing in itself but I think I must make more effort to look forwards more - to future good things: ‘what ifs’ can be good and bad, and in the future, as well as in the past.🙂
With all good wishes