Lucky

I don't normally go in for much in the way of hyperbole, but it could be said today that I'm lucky to be alive. I went to visit the friend who'd kindly accommodated me a couple of weeks ago, and after an interesting guided tour of his home town, which I hadn't visited before (apart from the short walk from the station to his house), and a very pleasant lunch, I set off for home. It wasn't too long before it became apparent that there was something wrong with the car, vibrations from the front passenger side wheel that became gradually worse, to the extent that I pulled in at a motorway service area to try and see what was going on. I put my hand on the wheel, and it moved! The whole thing was loose, and taking off the wheel trim, it was easy to see why - there were only two of the four wheel nuts in place, and they were working loose as well. I was probably within a few minutes of the wheel coming off of the car altogether, which, given that I'd just been on a motorway, could have made it an extremely bad day for me. The only thing I can conclude is that when I had to have a new tyre earlier in the week, the tyre fitter either forgot to replace the wheel nuts at all, or hadn't tightened them sufficiently which had allowed them to work loose and fall out. To say I was shaken up, given the potential consequences, is a considerable understatement. Having not called out the AA for about three years, I've now called them twice in a week, and, as is my experience with the organisation, they came up with a solution to my problem. The service area I was stranded at wasn't too far from the outskirts of North London, and there proved to be a car spare dealer a within half an hour's drive that was open until 10:00 - it was 8:00 by this time - which luckily had some wheel nuts in stock, so the patrolman took me to the shop to get them, fitted them for me and had me ready to resume my interrupted journey at around 9:30. At that rate, I was expecting to get home just after 1:00 in the morning, but the final episode of my unpleasantly eventful journey even shot that expectation down in flames, because the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall was closed after an accident, leading to a 25 mile detour and yet another three-quarters of an hour added to the trip, so that I eventually got indoors just before 2:00. Just remind me how much I love working 'up country'!
After all that excitement yesterday and into the early hours of this morning, I'm in the throes of a fairly lazy day today, although we did head out to do some shopping earlier on. Heading into my week off, I have to say I haven't got much ambition to do anything much at all, beyond bare necessities - as I've already said, I very much feel the need for some 'downtime' at the moment, and I have particularly little desire to spend anything other the absolute minimum of time in the driving seat of my car in the next few days, given the mileage I've put in over the last four weeks.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B