It was an ordinary morning. I dragged myself out of bed and got ready for work. Then I hopped into my little Festy and proceeded to enact the morning ritual of crossing three lanes to get into my lane. In the middle of this tricky manoeuvre a guy beeped at me (nothing unusual there) then he rolled down his window and pointed at my front wheel and said ‘I think you have a flat tyre’. This is when the sinking feeling in my stomach started. I moved the car to the side of the road and jumped out. Sure enough the tyre was as flat as a pancake. My first reaction was to open the boot and search for the spare tyre unfortunately I drew a blank there. My second instinctive reaction was to ring my Dad (the source of all knowledge about practical and useful things) to enquire about the absent spare tyre. He informed me that it was probably under the car and could be released by loosening a bolt in the boot of the car. So I duly looked under the car and saw the spare tyre. I also located the bolt in the boot which I needed to loosen in order to release the spare tyre but alas how was I going to do this?

I imagine that it was the utterly puzzled look on my face and the wandering hopelessly around that car that tipped off a passing truck driver that I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. He parked his truck ahead of my car and came over to ask me if I needed a hand. I agreed immediately that I did indeed need help and I explained about the spare tyre under the car but I didn’t know how I was going to release it. He took one look in the boot and pulled out a jack and wrench which were secured behind some felt carpet in the side panel of the boot. To be honest I didn’t know they were there (even though I’ve had the car almost two years) but I sort of hope that I would have found them eventually myself if he hadn’t turned up. :-) To cut a long story short he changed the flat tyre in no time, including pumping up my slightly flat spare tyre from his own truck (how jammy was that!), and was on his way in a flash barely allowing me to shake his hand and say thank you.

Being on the receiving end of kindness did not stop there. When I took the car to a local garage to fix the flat tyre they refused to charge me because it was a minor problem. So a day that started out looking like it was going to be a pure disaster ended with me driving home in a car with four lovely plump tyres and a better opinion of mankind. The only thing I need to do now is find a car maintenance course so that I can tackle a flat tyre with ease and confidence the next time I’m that situation.