stars & cars

We were in Newcastle, driving along a road that winds through the centre of the city atop a hill so that the city spreads out on either side of the road. My father was driving, I was sitting in the front passenger seat, my mother and my friend, R, were sitting in the back. I was gazing out the window, looking up at the glittering stars which, rather than scattered randomly across the sky, were lined up neatly in a row of about twelve stars. I mentioned the unusual formation and my mother and friend in the back looked up through the window in the roof of the car to see the stars. Some of the stars moved out of formation: they made the shape of a caterpillar and swam, much like the motion of an amoeba under a microscope, across the sky. Suddenly my father asked if we would like oysters for dinner. Our attention was immediately brought back to the road where, in front of us, two cars had crashed, blocking the road. One was an oyster carrier and we could see shucked oysters spilled out of the van, scattered over the bitumen. In the spilt second we had to think before we reached the two cars, I felt it was inevitable that we would crash also crash, but my father saw a slender gap between the cars and adroitly navigated our car through the gap, just shaving against one car, a white Mercedes, and passing through unscathed. He then, with a great calm, indicated and pulled over to the left so that we could swap details with the driver of the Mercedes who was walking around the crash site. It appeared that no one was injured. I was amazed at my father's incredible control and his great driving skill. We knew that he had managed to save us from what may have been a disaster.