I spent a few weeks in Vienna, after being almost killed in a car crash in Cardiff, returning to work in PERA after a weekend with my brother in Sully. I had avoided a car that came off a slip-road into my path on the A470 dual-carriage-way, skidded in the driving rain, and impacted backwards into a street-light. When I resumed consciousness, I was surrounded by people, with my feet still on the back parcel-shelf of my MGB GT, and my head on the road. If I had been wearing my safety-belt, my neck would have snapped. The car was a write-off, and I returned from hospital to Sully in a neck-brace, knowing that there would be compensation from the other driver, whom the police caught on the Severn Bridge. My brother later returned home from work, with his neck in a brace, as he had, at the same time that morning, crashed his MG into a shop in Cardiff's Bute Street. I had left a note that I was down the Captain’s Wife pub in Swanbridge, overlooking Sully Island, in the days before that glorious pub was altered into a kiddies’ theme-pub. He and his came into the pub, and I thought he was taking the mick, as he also had a neck brace on. We drank far too much. On the way home, we went on the swings in the Distillers sports field – and both fell off. We arrived back at his place, to find our parents waiting at the doostep. His wife had phoned that both of us had crashed, and they had driven from Johnstone, Pembrokeshire, around 4 hours tavelling, in the days before the motorway was built. Fed up with consultancy, travelling constantly, I decided that I needed to leave Britain and tour Eastern Europe. From a base in Vienna, I went to Bratislava and Budapest along the Brown Danube, past armed border guards, and just spent several weeks doing nothing.

[Vienna - 1981]

[Vienna - 1981]