The car crash came into its own

Despite appearances, these aren't, strictly speaking, new additions to the Ballardian photo file. The presence of high rise apartment blocks, the skeletal outline of a half-constructed institutional building, the bleak urban highway - these are just coincidence. This is, however, the scene of a crash, though hardly one to excite Dr Vaughan.

At the end of March, immediately after passing over the Brook Hill roundabout by the University of Sheffield, a truck belonging to the venerable H Askey Transport firm (aka Arundel Motors), drifted without singalling from one lane of the Netherthorpe Road dual carriageway to the other, neatly removing the front corner of my Saab. There were fortunately no injuries - and, contrary to the expectations of casual readers of Ballard, no sexual frissons to speak of.
The other party are contesting my claim for repair costs, hence these photos, taking several weeks after the event, for the benefit of the solicitors. The aerial photography available at Google Maps is also proving valuable in countering the other party's claim that lane priorities around the roundabout are other than what they actually are.

The building visible at extreme left of this picture, as it happens, is the new Sheffield Bioincubator, a new "purpose built facility providing the ideal environment for entrepreneurial bioscience to flourish into successful business". It's built in the grounds of the old Jessops Women's Hospital, where I was born. Mr Ballard, I suspect, could hardly have selected a more fitting location for this minorly fateful intersection of trajectories.