Tyred And Worn Out After A Long Sqwark

John Cleese, talking about writing the sitcom Fawlty Towers with Connie Booth, said they basically took a big piece of paper and wrote down a plot outline where they essentially tortured this poor hotel owner.

They were designing Basil Fawlty’s life based on Murphy’s Law. The result was side-achingly funny.

So, in the interests of your entertainment, I shall relate my weekend tyre adventure.

I’ve had my car about 18 months and so far haven’t even had to open the boot, let alone change a tyre. That was until Saturday when I decided to go visit my nephews at my sister’s house in Mana (about half-an-hour’s drive up the coast).

I started out, but was fairly quickly aware that something was wrong. I drove about 500m and then pulled over, got out and discovered, yes, the rear left tyre was flat. Well, there was air in there, but slightly less than an asthmatic one-lunged geriatric with emphysema.

No worries, I thought: There’s a garage not far away, I’ll go there and inflate it. If it goes straight down again then I’ll just put the spare on.

So I drove slowly down to the garage, only to find that it was not only closed, but it was closed down! At this point the tyre was on its last exhausted puff. So I pulled into a car park to put the spare on.

I opened the boot and was relieved to find the spare was fully inflated. Phew. However, I was less enthused to discover that the bastard that sold me the car had neglected to leave me with a jack.

I had no choice but to drive home. Just after pulling out of the car park a woman walking past waved and pointed to the flat. I told her my predicament and she walked off.

Just as well we had this exchange, because I ended up following her about three-quarters of the way home. Eight kilometres an hour. Walking pace. About five metres behind this woman all the way. Had she not known my problem, she would have thought “Oh God! Psycho serial-killer!”

Meanwhile, I was having to wind the window down every few seconds to wave traffic through. These were quiet back streets which suddenly seemed like State Highway 1. There were cars lining up just for the view, I’m sure.

I get home and call up my nephews. One of them comes to pick me up. I go out there for the evening, and when they drop me back off they lend me a spare jack.

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon. I’m waiting for a moment between rain squalls to get out and change the tyre. Finally I pick my moment and head out there. First things first; loosen the wheel nuts.

I get the tyre iron and take to the first nut. It won’t budge. So I end up standing on the tyre iron to get it to turn. It does. Relief. But then I cannot get the tyre iron off the nut. It’s jammed half-way around the iron’s star-shaped hole.

The wind chill factor now is -3000 degrees and it starts to rain again. I take the tyre iron and wedged nut and retreat inside. I try hammering out the nut, without luck, then reckon perhaps the way to fix it is simply to reverse what caused it.

I venture back out and sure enough, tightening the nut back up easily lets me get the tyre iron off. And so I start on nut number two. It moves with some reluctance. Nut three – like it’s welded on. Then the tyre iron gave way, allowing it to turn around the nut with only an arm-numbing clunk each time it slipped.

I called my nephew.

He kindly drove half-an-hour in to help me change the tyre in Antarctic weather. His tyre iron makes short work of the other nuts. I haul out the spare tyre. He jacks up the car.

We take the flat tyre off. We go to put the spare on… except the wheel hub is too low. The car needs to be jacked higher. But the jack is now leaning at an awkward angle. Jack it up any further and the whole car could come down on us.

We put the flat tyre back on and lower the car. Then we put the nuts back on and I roll the car back to more solid ground. (Did I mention that we were trying to do this on a hill? The nearest flat ground being about 200m away.)

Eventually – third try – we managed to jack up the car. It went fairly smoothly from there; flat tyre off, spare tyre on, everything good. Though now I have to find the money to get the flat fixed, buy a tyre iron and a new jack.

Many thanks to my nephew, Anthony, for his help. I’m sure the dose of hypothermia we both gained from the experience won’t be fatal. Seriously, it took me over an hour to warm up again after the adventure, and another three hours before I was anywhere near approaching “hot”.

So, please, take this moment to salute my ineptitude.