A horrible day - Lorry versus Mother.

This post is completely unrelated to work, but I feel the urge to vent so this seems to be a good place!

I try and do my bit and whenever possible I walk to collect my daughter from school or son from playschool. It saves me petrol (bloody expensive now!) and keeps me fitter (eating chocolate while you walk doesn't count does it?).

Unfortunately my daughters school is on a very narrow road. The parking there is tricky to say the least which means some parents park on the zigzag lines, double yellow lines, half up on the pavement and double park. You can imagine how much fun negotiating all that is with a double pushchair.

Last wednesday I had walked up the school and my 3 year old was walking so I just had the two year old in the pushchair. As we came out of the school there was a HGV sitting at the side of the road, on the "wrong" side, engine turned off sitting on the zigzag lines. The driver was refusing to move and was trying to make the drivers of cars coming the other way back up so he could get where he wanted to go.

I basically ignored it all and was smugly thinking ha ha this is why I walk up! I walked on the pavement with the children alongside the lorry.

Unfortunately this is when my smugness got shattered. The lorry moved and as it swung back out to the right side of the road its tailgate bars swung out and caught my pushchair. This started to drag my pushchair (containing the 2 year old) backwards and towards the road.
I don't remember much - according to some of the other mothers I dragged the pushchair off the bars, shoved the 8yr and 3 yr old into the hedge alongside the pavement to get them out of harms way before shouting in not so polite terms at the driver.

The driver of the lorry seemed to think that since the children were unharmed and it was only me that had been clipped by the tailbars on my arm (as well as wrenching my muscles by dragging the pushchair away from the HGV) that all should be forgiven and ignored.

I am not so forgiving when it comes to situations like this - IF my 3 year old had been in the pushchair like he is normally those heavy metal tailbars would have hit him in his face doing god knows what kind of damage, if I hadn't have dragged the pushchair off the tail bars my 2 year old would have been dragged down the road in the pushchair. And due to this the police were called.

Have got to admit that the youngest two are having nightmares as am I at the moment.

Hopefully the parking situation will resolve its self soon but it has put me off walking up to school for the time being.