Sleepy Hoolet Neuk

You see it in the old comedy films but it is weird when it happens!
OK, I knew on Saturday when the dogs were tumbling out the car at the top of the driveway that there was something not right with the handbrake, and then I forgot.

And yesterday morning I was at the top of the driveway, with the engine running and was leaning over the bonnet scraping the ice off the windscreen when I felt the car start to move away from me, backwards, down what is a steep hill although it does not look so bad in the photo.

I held on to it, perhaps for a full 20 seconds which is a long time in those circumstances, and was working out how I could get round and in the open door, or behind it, when I realised that is how people get killed, and that I was just going to have to let my little car go.

And then it really picked up speed, bucketing backwards faster and faster. And I could imagine it striking the walls at the foot of the driveway and blasting into the road to hit something else there.

But, instead, unbelievably, it hit the little kerb on one side, turned sideways, and shot up and backwards over the little kerb on the other side, and came to rest, very gently, in the tree.

And I feel really, really, lucky!