Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

Zombie spiders were scary, but what I’ve just heard is equally so.

In a matter of moments, I have gone from happy, smiling James, to rotten, moody James.

All day, I’ve been writing downstairs, alone in the flat. It was down to the television to keep me company, and it wasn’t doing too badly. But then my flatmate walked in. Since I had been closeted away working all day, it had been almost an entire day since I last spoke to a real human being, so it was pretty awesome to see him.

When he sat down, though, it was clear that something had upset him. He told me about his neck, which had just been injured in a car accident. It’s whiplash, and there’s not much he can do about it from the sounds of it. The driver sped off the moment he knew my friend was not seriously hurt.

Now, this article says that there are vast numbers of people driving without insurance, and there’s certainly a whiff of this about what happened to my friend today. Or maybe he’s one of the people who forget to renew their MOT, but that ultimately leads to a car without insurance anyway. Or maybe I’m jumping to conclusions.

But suppose I’m right. And suppose this article on fraudulent insurance claims is right. Is the recession really to blame? And if it is, then can we assume that the recession is behind what happened to my friend today as well? I don’t know. After all, it’s easy to label things like that.

But driving without insurance is dangerous, regardless of who or what is to blame; it’s dangerous for others on the road as well as for the driver. Of course, I might be reading too much into it, but it’s certainly left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. And it wasn’t even me that got injured in the accident.