In the early hours of a recent Sunday morning, I was unlucky enough to suffer a catastrophic tyre failure on a motorway on my way home from a night out. Thus I unexpectedly embarked upon a series of unplanned activities for my girl-mode self. It was interesting being propelled suddenly into places where I would not normally have considered venturing in girl-mode.
The recovery vehicle driver didn’t bat an eyelid. Friendly, professional, and efficient, loaded my vehicle onto the recovery truck and off we went. I guess they see All Life in their job, but it’s nice to just be treated as a human without any fuss or bother.
Unfortunately, it transpired that my recovery cover would only take me 16km, which isn’t ideal, and also that none of the alleged 24×7 tyre replacement services in the area were really 24×7; I’ve seen this before and it is very annoying – why do services advertise 24h operation when they actually are not? Luckily a very good friend was, by co-incidence, having trouble sleeping and within range, so we headed off to drop my car outside his house.
A 15km drive later and the car is outside my friend’s place ready for a new tyre in the morning, and I’m ready to grab a couple of hours sleep before this!
After briefly sleeping on a spare mattress on the floor, I was awake by 07:00 to ring around tyre replacement services. Managed to get one to come out to me as first job of the morning, and they were with me by 10:30 (go figure).
The young man who arrives with new tyre and the equipment to fit it doesn’t bat an eyelid, just gets on with it, and I’m back on the road with a new tyre but the wheel has not been balanced.
I head for home (some 125km distant) and on the way stop at my usual tyre place. One front tyre has been replaced but not balanced, the other was nearing end of life anyway, so I get it replaced to give a matched pair. (One of the more unusual roles I have had in the past was as both a skid pan instructor and as a trainer for skid pan instructors; I know how unmatched pairs of tyres perform).
The garage is about as unfeminine a place as one can imagine. But, slightly to my surprise, there is no issue. I’m just a customer, and they just get on with it. As it should be.
In fact, the only distressing factor is that by this time I have heard about this attack on my friend. But apart from this, an instructive day. Most companies/services will accept myself (and others) as they are without fuss.
And that is all that I ask.
Sophie Baskerville 