It could have been worse

• I could, for example, have had a tot of brandy in my morning coffee in preparation for another day surviving triplets in fight mode, domestic chaos, and the white cat who sits on the doorstep and shouts at passers-by in cat language. Of course Grit would never ever resort to brandy at 9am. Not a tot. That's for sure.

• There might have been a full-blown triplet fight going in the rear. With scissors. Shark would be screaming, Squirrel would be thumping and kicking, and Tiger would have unstrapped herself, shouting 'Stop the car! I'm getting out!'
  

• The car might have had no MOT. Thank goodness we remembered.

• And all four tyres might have been bald.

• We might have been travelling more than 28 mph. The consequences of that I hardly dare think of. Bo, who I once worked with, was travelling home when she crashed into a van. The shopping that was on the back seat disgorged and a pot of strawberry yogurt flew forward and splattered open on the windscreen. She thought it was her own blood and promptly passed out.

• I could have been on the phone while simultaneously tuning the radio just at the moment of impact. To get out of that one I might have told the officer, 'well to get Radio 4 I did put the cheese sandwich down'.

• The pet leopard might have been real.

There. It could have been much worse. I feel better now.