thanks for your condolences and advice

I don't see how it can be repaired as the top, back and sides are all in pieces from (at least the bridge up - i don't remember exactly how far the damage goes but it seems unlikely the scrolls would be intact.I don't like to open the case to look at it and if I start lifting it, more falls apart). It was listed on my house contents insurance, don't know if that covers this circumstance, but I should have increased the amount to account for rising prices. It surely won't be an amount that would cover rebuilding and it would not be the same fiddle. If the neck and finger board had been broken that would have been different I think.

Shouldn't the driver have looked out for me? What if a child or a dog had walked out beside the car. If he did know I was still there and thought he had enough room, I could have moved in the direction of the kerb at just the wrong moment!

I'm not teetotal but have never been that much into drinking and I don't do drink for emotional succour. I finally managed to get myself to open the case of the dead fiddle and take out an uninjured bow, tune my other fiddle and play on it a bit last night and that did help. (Sometimes I can't bow when I'm tense or emotional; I've noticed that guitar and dulcimer aren't so sensitive to the player's emotion as violins are)

yes Scoville,worse things do happen than instruments being destroyed. earlier this year one of my dogs got scraped by a car. It was 6.15 am, the small field was beside a cul de sac (dead end, turn around)and there was no one about so I thought it was safe to let the dogs loose, but then a police car came and the dog, who had no car sense, went on to the road at the wrong time. He wasn't at all badly injured, just some ugly cuts which have healed amazingly well without too much scarring. The driver didn't stop to talk with me. I am reminded again now of how much damage a car can do even when going 'dead' slow and am thankful my dog wasn't badly injured then and I wasn't physically injured at all yesterday.

Is it 'normal' to cry for a crushed instrument? I have wept. Worse things happen. The friend who owned the Chinese fiddle (though his main instument was flute) drowned just before the age of 52, a week before he was going to go see friends in Portugal. We don't know what happened. That friend was seriously alcohol dependent, and the my father's friend who gave me the dark fiddle plays classical music and gave me what he thought was the least good of his fiddles -- so for different reasons maybe it isn't so good to have their names inscribed on an inferior fiddle I am planning to donate for use of learners at music classes! am still thinking I'd like to do that commemoration, however