A year ago I was involved in a car accident. It was very scary mainly for three reasons:

1) It happened in France and I was supposed to arrive in London for our tour the next day.

2) Carlos tried to avoid the car from crashing four times, but the ice made it impossible to stay on the road.

3) The car got out of the road and turned on one side, making it incredibly difficult to get out of it and grabbing our flying phones and belongings.

But the first thing that comes to mind after a scary event in which both people in the car could have died easily isn’t…”Wow, crap…this was scary as hell” No, at least not in our case. I turned my head, afraid of finding Carlos dead or unconscius, but he wasn’t. He was looking at me. My face must have looked horrified because of the uncomfortable position I was in. You see, he was driving and his door touched the floor, mine was in the air, if I unfastened my seatbelt without being careful, I’d fall on him. But I asked him first: “Are you ok? Are you conscious?” He answered a short “Yes” I asked again to make sure he wasn’t on shock: “are you sure, did you hit your head, or your arms?” “No, but I’m quite dizzy”. Not very encouraging words, but after checking I was OK too, we both agreed it could be because of the four or five turns and the movement of his arms to turn the steering wheel while skating on ice.

We were lucky, yes. But the thing is, we saw it coming. A huge hail appeared suddenly in front of our eyes, and he slowed down the car. There was almost no traffic, so he started driving 80 km/h on a 130 km/h road. We were both staring at the road, almost as if we were expecting something to appear. Then it happened, and the rest was all pretty clear. I have very vivid memories of the moment and they come to my mind as separate images every now and then, specially when I’m in a car. Some would say it’s PTSD, but I think it’s just your brain reminding you you’re still alive in a very messed up way.

The thing about having second chances at life is that you don’t get them right away. After the car crash, I immediately felt gratitude and instant happiness, but then I came back to reality. My car was almost upside down in a foreign country and I needed to act quickly.

Luckily a couple of people stopped to help us and we managed to call the insurance policy, which took care of everything for me. My car had to wait a couple of days in the garage with all our musical stuff inside. They had to break one of the windows to carry the car, so we were not only a bit worried about our health and situation, we didn’t know if our stuff was safe.

They took us to a nearby hospital and we had to explain ourselves on parts of the body that hurt and feelings we were having in French. Not easy for me and Carlos doesn’t speak any French. Don’t ask me how, but they ended up asking why we were in France and wanting to see a music video, and I had to search for our music on the firefighter’s phone. I remember that moment as a funny thing to do. Although I got pretty scared trying to write “Anyway” in a different keyboard. I had no idea they have a different letter order in France and I thought I had something wrong in my brain after the accident because I wasn’t able to write one word. I understood what happened after a few seconds though 😅

Then we had to wait. Even though they were trying to be as fast as they could, the hospital was packed and they needed to check out stuff and well, probably many things I wasn’t understanding. Carlos got in first, we were really worried abut the dizziness, maybe he’d hurt his neck but he wasn’t feeling too much pain just yet. I had pain, but I wasn’t dizzy, so I was OK, I thought.

After he went in and they told him it was probably something minor, I was very relieved, but then I went in. And whenever the doctor touched one of my vertebrae, it hurt. I told him it was just a little bit of pain, not too much, but he made an x-ray and saw a little crack. He explained in French what happened, but “torse” sounded quite like torsión in Spanish, which means twisted instead of sprain. Apparently he was saying entorse. I kept asking if it was serious and he said that it depended. He told me I had to spend the night because they had to do more tests, including a CT scan. I was scared, and although I felt grateful for being alive, I wasn’t sure if I could be playing drums anytime soon. I tried to sleep, and although I did for a couple of hours, it wasn’t easy with a neck collar.

The next morning they confirmed about the “entorse” but then I understood because he exemplified it as if he was twisting his ankle. He told me I needed to be wearing the collar day and night for at least a week, and travel only by plane to go home where they would have to repeat the x-rays.

Now, that moment, I thought I was happy for being alive. There you have it, when you know everything is, in some way, going to be fine (no matter how long it takes) you are relieved and thankful. But then, I had to stay in the hospital while the insurance company tried to find a hotel for me and we had to go to wherever the car was to pick up a couple of things.

Carlos left me at the hotel, resting, and went to pick them up in a taxi himself. He couldn’t take too much stuff because of his neck, so he asked the taxi driver for help. He kindly took guitars and heavy valuables that we kept in our room for a week.

Considering we were not going to UK and Ireland anymore, he gave him a bottle of wine we’ve bought for my aunt. He was very grateful and I thought it was the perfect gift for a french man.

I felt so useless because I couldn’t help in any way, we couldn’t go on tour anymore and it was all because I had a little crack in my neck. You feel grateful, of course, and you imagine the worst case scenario in which things could have gone terribly wrong. Then you feel even more thankful for being OK, but someone has to cancel those gigs and you don’t feel strong enough to talk to anyone about it. My parents, my aunt and grandparents already knew, but we needed to cancel the tour and that would mean everyone would know.

Carlos was the one writing the post. I was lying on a bed, trying to sleep and telling him I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look at the car and the text without feeling like shit. Writing that post took us more than any other we’ve written and our phones bursted into a million messages instantly. I knew that would happen, so I had silenced it before. I couldn’t deal with that.

I am very thankful that so many people sent me messages, I’m not ungrateful. But I literally couldn’t deal with it. Grabbing the phone hurt my neck.

The accident was on a Thursday and we had to stay there until my father and Carlos’s father came to help us bring everything back in one of their cars. The insurance and the extended policy covered taking the stuff back, but only if they sent us in a car with the belongings. It didn’t make any sense to me, but the doctor told them I could only go by taxi to the airport and then by plane. It was more than 8 hours in total so we waited for 5 days or so in order for the neck to feel a bit better.

In the meantime, we spent 24 hours in a hotel next to the highway. We ate at the hotel, we slept at the hotel, we watched French documentaries and we joked about enjoying our holidays in France.

It wasn’t the worst, I must say. We almost ended using all their extra pillows, Carlos kept asking for more pillows because I couldn’t be comfortable in any position with that thing on my neck. They were very kind most of the time and even though their policy was not taking food to the room, the kind lady at the reception desk brought it for me one day.

Saturday. We wanted to eat something at the hotel restaurant but they told us it was closed during the weekend. Whaaaat?

OK, not so great, we didn’t have any other way to get food that I knew of, so I started researching like crazy on my phone. I told Carlos I’ll search for JustEat or Deliveroo and see what they had. It took me an hour to find out that JustEat was AlloResto in France. I found out that we were in the middle of nowhere because they only had one place that got to our area. Luckily for me it was a sushi place and they had Poke and Ceviche!

So we enjoyed a great meal after the accident. They used kumquats in their white fish Poke and I loved the combo. I’ve actually made a couple of Pokes at home using kumquat after that. Carlos took the picture for me, although I told him it was not necessary. He said maybe I wanted to post it in my blog some day. He was really nice with me, trying to cheer me up all the time.

But I knew we couldn’t be eating delivery poke for the whole weekend. I researched a bit more.

I found there was a boulangerie right next to us and I was hoping they had some savoury food too. Also, there was an Indian restaurant, not bad at all. But I couldn’t really walk that much the first day. I was very sore and the roads were icy, I couldn’t really risk it on slippery floors.

I think I didn’t take any pictures of the Indian food because we went to pick it up and I was really craving something warm.

The boulangerie was a dream come true. We were so lucky! It was huge! But not only that, it was cozy and warm and they had everything exposed so we could see exactly what we were ordering. We took it to the hotel room so I could be sitting comfortably against the wall and then I took my neck collar out to chew.

I remember this were my favourite. They were incredibly cheap I think they didn’t even cost 2€ a piece. I ordered this one called fourmie, I think. It was blue cheese and walnuts and a delicious homemade bread. I was amazed at how good it was. The bread was incredibly tender and crunchy at the same time.

I tried the canelés for the second time. First time had been the year before, I stopped in a gas station and bought a packet of them.

I was surprised at how much I loved them and I wasn’t expecting that flavour at all. It was instant love and any time a see a canelé somewhere, I try it even if I barely eat gluten and sugar anymore. I still enjoy little things in life and canelés are one of them.

The croissants were out of this world and the rest of the patisserie was incredible too.

Our fathers arrived the day before we left. They helped us taking everything outside from the car because we were pretty sure it had to stay there. We took everything from my car to my Dad’s and threw away some of the stuff, as well as left the guys in the garage some food presents.

We said our goodbyes to my old car that took us to so many places and saved us that 30th of November. Now I was grateful for everything that had happened. I felt I could enjoy life again being stronger than I was, learning from what had happened.

We had lunch at the hotel and it was lovely. I remember this beef carpaccio that I had twice, but the rest of the food was pretty good too.

Then we decided we should have dinner at the same place we had been eating all week, Feuillette. The boulangerie opened until 20h, so we went there at 19:30 and feasted celebrating we were alive and that our family was there. We tried what we hadn’t eaten the previous days, I ordered a potato pie and a cheese pizza.

 

 

My dad also took some macarons home.

I always try to take macarons for my dad whenever I go through France but I usually never stop in cities, so I end up taking him macarons from Carrefour, which are nice, but it’s not the same. I was glad he took a big box of them 🙂

The day we went back we had to get up early in order to arrive in Paris on time. We had a massive breakfast at the airport, the place was called Paul.

A chicken and veggie sandwich and another one with saucisson, beurre et cornichons. I love that combo of salami and gherkin with butter. Even though I don’t eat too much meat nowadays, I love those flavours together.

We had to flight to Madrid and then to Coruña. There aren’t direct flights to Paris anymore, so I had to spend a lot of time in between. The greatest excuse for a Salmon Bagel in Madrid airport to eat on the plane! ✈️

The thing is, although I remember those horrible moments of the accident every other day, I sometimes remember what I ate, how nice people were during my stay in the hospital and the hotel, and how lucky I was to spend almost a week, alive, in France. No matter I coulndn’t get out of bed most of the time, I was alive, breathing and eating incredible food. And the best part is, I wasn’t alone. I will always be grateful for everyting that I have every day, but sometimes we forget about being thankful because we are busy trying to survive (in any possible way).

So, please, remember to make time every day to sit down, breathe and be grateful for what you have and what you are, because the rest of the day is for surviving and we surely shouldn’t forget about what really matters.

Don’t forget to be grateful every single day (even the crappy ones 😉 ) Have fun and keep fooding!