A case of retyrement
Grandad September 1st, 2011
A few months ago, Spanner gave the car a once over.
When he was finished doing what he had to do on it, he dropped it back to me.
“Your tyres” he said. Spanner can be infuriatingly laconic at times.
“What about ‘em?”
“They’re getting old. They don’t meet the requirements.”
He pointed out that three of the tyres had fine hair cracks on them and the fourth was a little worn. There was still plenty tread on them so I asked what he meant about requirements. Apparently all tyres have to have some fucking symbol on them and mine didn’t. I asked what the hell he was talking about and he told me that EU regulations demanded that all tyres have a particular symbol and that in future my car would fail the NCT if I didn’t have it. I asked what would happen if the tyres were in perfect nick and he said it didn’t matter; that tyres were obliged to have the symbol.
Fucking EU and their fucking regulations.
A few weeks ago I noticed that the car was sitting on a flat tyre.
Bollox!
I pumped it up with the foot pump and it was fine. I have driven many miles since then and the tyre behaved itself.
Yesterday it was flat again.
Bollox!
I hate intermittent faults and this was obviously an intermittent puncture. It worried me as I intend to do a fair bit of driving in the next couple of weeks on very fast roads and in a country where I don’t speak the lingo. I have also found through bitter experience that garages tend to be few and far between in France. It was time to do something. As all the tyres had to be replaced sooner or later I decided to go the whole hog and get them all replaced.
I brought the car into Skobieville, as Spanner doesn’t do tyres. He says they are beneath his dignity.
I strode into the tyre place and asked for four of their best remoulds.
They told me they didn’t do remoulds any more, which is a damned shame as I have literally driven hundreds of thousands of miles on remoulds since I started driving. They did the job, were a lot cheaper and I never had any problems with them. I asked why not.
“EU regulations. They have banned remoulds” says yer man behind the counter.
What the fuck is it about the EU? Every fucking corner I turn I get some new fucking EU regulation rammed at me. And it’s always something niggly and trivial.
Are they deliberately trying to piss me off?
They’re succeeding.
Shower of fucking cunts.
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