04 Jun 07
I've been very lucky with punctures for the last couple of years, aside from a couple on my pushbike, but the rear right tyre of the Roomster succumbed to a slow leak a few days ago. My usual suppliers and the nearest Kwik-Fit both said they didn't stock the right 15" Bridgestone Turanza, although both said they could order one easily enough. I've never had much joy with tyres that have to be ordered - they turn up late and they're usually the wrong ones - so I decided to go with the Pirelli that Kwik-Fit had in stock.
It's always a joy to hang around a tyre fitter's while they're working on your car. They're phenomenally, defiantly unmodern places, like bookies or pet shops or fish and chip shops. This branch, in the Fulham Road, is gloriously well situated. Every other building in this particularly twee part of south-west London is a vegetarian restaurant, a posh frock shop, a nail parlour or a tanning studio, but Kwik-Fit - with its coating of grease and a machine selling a tea/coffee hybrid- refuses to budge beyond the early 70s.
Not that the price was exactly retro: £105.50 for a 195/55 15" tyre, fitted and balanced. And there was something hideously 21st century about the follow-up phone call that started as a query about whether I was satisfied with the service I'd received and quickly turned into an attempt to sell me insurance.
