A Tale of a Tyre

BH had a trip to our local Tesco yesterday morning (Saturday) and came back with a damaged vehicle. That is to say the nearside front tyre - the one you keep whacking when your aim at the kerb is poor - was flat. Being phone free, she elected to drive slowly home to the car park which presently serves as our drive. It now being around 10:30.

Started by investigating the spare tyre situation. To find that what we actually had was a contraption which plugged into the cigarette lighter inside the car for power and which plugged into the offending tyre in order to squirt in some sort of latex, hopefully sealing the hole and inflating the tyre in the one operation. Latex well past its best before date. Instructions said, inter alia, do not use if the wall of the tyre is damaged. Inspection revealed that it was, so the contraption was not a runner.

Took photographs of the part numbers of the offending tyre, just in case they were needed.

Returned to base to fire up the laptop. A bit easier to use than a telephone in the bright morning sun. Discover that at least one tyre shop on the island was open and might have the tyre in stock.

Check that our insurance from CSIS (reference 4) does include recovery, provided by Green Flag (reference 3). My telephone does not do apps, which would have been even easier, but in reasonably short order I was talking to a lady at a call centre with a strong Scottish accent. Rather less bother to convince her that I was who I said I was than HSBC - but I suppose that is as it should be. Unfortunately, while she was ferreting something out, the line vanished. Start again, this time on a much better line to a young man with an English accent. Repeat the connection procedure and he is able to resume. He identifies a recovery firm (reference 2) and a tyre firm (reference 1).

About half an hour later, after various progress reports by text, a young man from Bartletts turns up with recovery vehicle. All hydraulic platform and no need for towing. He checks that the tyre change is a while-you-wait thing - rather than wait until Monday or something - and off we go.

On the way, I find that First Line Recovery (FLR) of Epsom are not the only people to be interested in getting custom registration plates for their vehicles, with Bartletts doing something in that way, although not going as far as FLR had gone. He also knew of a company which specialised in slurry removal which had registration plates to go with that. Involving lots of 'P's. Apparently some people really do pay thousands for such plates - but we agreed that having flash livery and plates did catch attention and may well be worth while. I only remembered later about the even more flashy people at reference 8.

I elect to change both front tyres, my memory being that one is supposed to have balance in such matters. Elect for a mid-range tyre. Be done within the hour they said, it now being about 14:15.

So I investigate the next door Aldi. Was there anything interesting there in the way of wine or continental sausage? Being foreign I had thought there might be. But no sausage and most of the wine was less than £5, so not knowing their stuff at all, I passed.

Onto the rather bigger Morrisons next door. Came across a No.34 in the car park and snapped it, thus rounding out the post at reference 5. Or at least I will when OneDrive gets around to a spot of synchronisation: once again it is moving stuff from laptop to telephone, but not the other way around. Inside, a pound of cherries, a bottle of their most expensive white wine - no bubbles that is -  a 2018 Chablis at £15 - and some confectionary involving peanut butter for BH. By which time it was 14:50 and the car was done. With a slightly larger scrap tyre thrown in for the amusement of small children - a tractor tyre once having done very well as a sandpit for some years. Home by 15:30.

Proper home cooking at 18:00: fried sausages, boiled vegetables and some quite decent raspberries to follow. Reminded, once again, how bad restaurants are at plain food - if they do it at all. For what I imagine are perfectly good commercial reasons, they always seem to have to make everything so complicated.

So a good job by all concerned. Could very easily have been much more of a pain that it was.

PS 1: maybe thirty years since I last changed a tyre, but I remembered this morning the advice of a friend, also many years ago, to have a length of pipe in your car to slip over the handle of the rather naff wheel nut spanner provided to give you a bit of leverage. The chances are that otherwise you won't get the garage-tightened nuts off. So even if we had invested in a spare tyre, I don't suppose I would have been able to put it on. But I might now consider getting myself a proper spare wheel and proper kit to put it on with. Would we grudge the space it would all take up?

PS 2: tried a few cherries this morning. Entirely satisfactory.

Reference 1: https://www.protyre.co.uk/garages/island-tyres-isle-of-wight-team-protyre.

Reference 2: https://www.bartlettsservicestation.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.greenflag.com/breakdown-cover.

Reference 4: https://www.csis.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/no34.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-tale-in-tub-concluded.html. With apologies to Dean Swift.

Reference 7: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/03/no30.html.

Reference 8: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-finest-drain-pump-in-surrey.html. Took a while to track this one down, but eventually I hit on the search key 'pump', which worked better than 'dragon'. Also, annoyingly, I had remembered base green rather than base orange.