Under Pressure

I think I have a puncture.


In one of the tyres on my car, of course. I don’t think I personally have a puncture, at least I hope not.

It’s one of the front ones, but on the near side so the car wobbles towards the kerb and not the middle of the road. Still dangerous though. I will get it pumped up with some more air tomorrow and see if it goes down again.

Why do these problems with tyres have to occur when it’s bad weather? When it’s hot and sunny they all run straight and true for months, fully inflated like blimps - but then as soon as the temperature drops or it blows a gale or the wind starts to come down in stairrods, the tyre goes flat! I think my car likes practical jokes.

It happened yesterday, I was early for work so I thought, I’ve got time to call at Tesco’s and check the pressures. They’ve got a convenient ‘air and water’ bit at the Tesco garage. I get there and notice a sign with the words in red “FREE AIR”. Oh good. That’s why there’s already a transit van and a new mini in front of me in the queue for air, but I’m there now, so I’ll wait. Transit vans’ tyres must hold a lot of air.

I’ll be organised, I thought. While I’m waiting, I’ll take all the little tops off the tyre valves. So I did, and got back into the car wondering where to put them where they wouldn’t get lost. In the little pocket between the seats, that’ll do.

Of course, by the time it’s my turn, the air pressure gauge isn’t working. Maybe it wasn’t working for all the others, perhaps that’s why it took the transit van so long. It took me a long time, you’re supposed to set the numbers to the right pressure and then hold it against the valve until the machine bleeps three times, so I’ve set it to 32 and pressed the button and yet it doesn’t bleep at all. Maybe I’m not holding the gauge properly.

Well, it isn’t working, there are no bleeps. I don’t think there’s air going in this tyre. Unless it bleeped and I didn’t hear it, or the tyre is already full. The number is showing 32, which is right. I move on to the next wheel and start again. No bleeps. Move round to the third wheel. This time it’s at the far side of the car and the tube is at a funny angle. I move, go back towards the machine and pull out the tube to ensure it’s not snagged under the wheels. Now I can’t see the gauge either through the car window, so I move again until I can peer through under the driver’s mirror and the corner window. No joy. Try the last tyre.

Why is it you have to go all the way round the car to the fourth wheel, the tube never stretches far enough? I now realise that I’ve actually been taking air out of the tyres and one is definitely flat now. I try again with this wheel, pressing extra hard and foregoing trying to see the gauge as I’m too low down and if I try to look up the gauge comes out and the tube hisses angrily at me. And I can’t read the numbers from here now because I’ve left my driving glasses in the car. No it’s not bleeping and the air has now almost all been taken out of the tyre. Their gauge is broken. So much for ‘free air’.


There’s nothing for it, I’ll have to put all the little tops back on the tyres and go and find another garage with one that works. By this time of course two of the little tops have buried themselves underneath a pile of car parking tickets and petrol receipts and refuse to come out. Eventually I’ve got four little tops and my hands are black from the dirt on the rubber, and I go round and put them back on. (It’s usually at this point that I drop one and it rolls down the grid that they always put next to the air and water thingy, but on this occasion it doesn’t happen.)

I get back in the car and then of course realise that it was a rather foolish thing in this ridiculously cold wind, to get out of the car to check the air in just my shirt sleeves. I had a jacket and a coat sitting there on the back seat. Shaking and feeling a little ill, I drive off trying to think where the next garage is, and whether the tyres will be on the rim before I get there, when I realise there is another garage across the road.

The air is not free here but at least the gauge works, for twenty pence. Only I’ve not got any change. I decide to put some petrol in the car and pay on my credit card, and ask the nice man behind the counter to add an extra forty pence to the bill so I can put 2 twenty pences in the machine. “I’m sorry I can’t do that. I’m personally accountable for everything in the till. We don’t give cash back”

So looking round I grab the first bar of chocolate I can see and present my twenty pound note. The chocolate of course is 89p but the man feels sorry for me and gives me a tenner, eight pound coins, a ten pence, a penny and five shiny twenty-pences.

This time I remembered to put my coat on before putting the money in the machine and checking the tyres. Of course it takes much longer than expected because I’m now putting back all the air that I took out of the tyres at the last garage!

I was a bit late for work and one of the tyres has already gone down again.

So now I will have to find a garage and go through the whole rigmarole again tomorrow. And see if the tyre goes down again. I suppose if it does I’ll then have to change the wheel and drop it off at a tyre repairers for repair. They’ll probably try and persuade me that the tyre has had it and needs replacing, and probably the one on the other side to match – that’s what they usually do, isn’t it? Well it’s only a few months since the last time and I let them replace all four then because they said they were on special offer.

Perhaps it’s time to invest in a train ticket.