Sickening crunch

I was just coming back from lunch at the little cafe in Winchester where Naomi and I often eat lunch (today, it was just me, as N was at a meeting) a few minutes ago, when an ambulance came hurtling up the hill of St George's Street with lights and sirens going. The problem is that St George's St is part of the one-way system, and when the ambulance reached the point next to Barclay's Bank, the cars were backed-up from the next set of traffic lights in two lanes.

So the ambulance driver decided that she could pass a Passat in front of her even though there was nowhere for the Passat to go, and there's a central reservation between lanes. She started blowing the ambulance horn, the Passat inched forward even though there wasn't really much further to go, and then she tried to go around it. Remember to picture the central reservation and the backed-up traffic. The ambulance impacted with the side of the Passat with the most hideous sound of tortured metal and plastic. Then the ambulance driver had to pull over so that she could share insurance details with the now-furious family in the car.

I'm left wondering about the fate of the injured person on the way to hospital - there was only one paramedic in the front of the ambulance, driving, so somebody must have been in the back with the patient.

Spare a thought.

Ack Ack Ack

Finally, there was a good gig in Winchester at the Railway this weekend. Alan came to mine for the weekend and we went to watch Ack Ack Ack (you can listen to themhere). We didn't know a great deal about them before going, except that Ash, the drummer from Charlottefield, is in the band, and they were therefore likely to be very good. They reminded me a bit of a jazzier Kill Yourself, with a combination of quite danceable grooves, dischordant guitar played using a slide (none of those sounds on the mp3 are keyboards, contrary to what I'd expected), and fuzzy vocals through a gas mask microphone. I'd highly recommend you check out their 12" if any of this sounds appealing.

In order to get to the point of the evening where we'd hear Ack Ack Ack, we'd already experienced the highly entertaining electronica of Gay Death Probe, and a truly awful hippy-ish shoegazer band The Limes. Still, it was worth it. When we got home, it was straight onto a steady diet of Newkie and Wii Sports.

I wrote Sunday off for any productivity, but am going to have to do those job applications I've been putting off tonight.