Portland Tyres go flat out to help!
| Published: 3rd November 2007 15:04 |
Why is it that you only find out that you have a flat tyre when you are just about to go somewhere important? I mean, it doesn't take long to have a quick check first thing in the morning (different of course if you are going to work) just to make sure that nothing is obviously wrong. But we don't, do we? We just dash out at the last minute and then get angry when we find something is wrong. You know - the wife needs the car, the kids should have been somewhere ten minutes ago, same old story...
So it was one Saturday lunch time. I looked in despair at the flat tyre on my car. What were my options? None really. I would just have to put on the spare. Then it happened. Try as I might the nut, holding the spare wheel in place under the chassis, would not budge. I decided, after a fruitless struggle, to drive to my nearest tyre repair workshop. Fortunately this happens to be Portland Tyres in Green Lane. Not far from the Fiddlers, near to the Beacon Tree pub (what used to be the Matapan).
I arrived, not to much the worse for having driven there at a snails pace - a slow speed even for Whalebone Lane South at midday on a Saturday. Pulling up on the pavement in front of the workshop, I was greeted cheerfully by a young mechanic who swiftly jacked up the car and removed the offending wheel. Within minutes, it seemed, the tyre had been repaired, and he was removing the jack.
It was so quick I hardly had a chance to ask him if he could loosen the nut holding the spare (I did not think I would be so close the next time I had a puncture). He gladly agreed, but soon realised that he would need help. I was most surprised to find the entire team out on the pavement, armed with an assortment of implements for loosening nuts.
Unfortunately the nut refused to budge, so I thanked them for their efforts and left. But it struck me just how friendly and helpful they'd been. They had spent quite a bit of time trying to sort out the problem, which wasn't part of their work - and wasn't even important (well, not now that my tyre had been repaired). Yet they had given it a go, and had remained cheerful the whole time. And it was a pleasant change not to have had that feeling, that I so often get in these situations, of being a pain in the butt, or in this case - the nut!
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