Flat

Some twenty-five years ago changing a flat tyre was, though inconvenient, no big deal. I remember doing so one morning on the way in to work, on a busy main road, with the rain pelting down and still getting there on time. And in those days spare tyres were genuine tyres, not simply a stop-gap measure to let you carry on down the road long enough to effect repairs or buy a new one.

But progress has changed all that. It's quite impossible these days to loosen the nuts to remove the offending tyre unless you've got the necessary equipment (and I'm talking about a lot more than comes with the standard repair kit) and super-human strength. And what is termed a spare tyre seems designed to make sure that you drive with maximum embarrassment and a whole lot of care. The hub on mine was bright orange and the tyre appeared about half the width of all the others.

I discovered all this in the late afternoon when I tried to drive home from work. Fortunately I've kept up my AA membership and was able to call them out to change the tyre for me once I'd realised there was no way those nuts were going to move but it left me feeling vaguely inadequate.

Stuck on the slip road next to the field I felt myself subjected to quite a miserable end to what had been a tough enough day already. But oddly enough the gloom cleared once I was on my way (the AA guy arrived in double quick time) and I felt really quite charitably warm to the world once I'd got a new tyre from a shop close to home. A little adversity now and again is no bad thing. As long as it is just a little.