Laying in my bath, trying to relax in the Tesco’s Value Lavender & Thyme bath soak, I found myself reflecting on the weekend and wondering what I must have done to upset the God’s of Automobiles so much that they felt it necessary to deliver upon to me a car as woefully prone to disaster as my current Jeep.
This weekend I had two outside bars to run, back-to-back, at the local village hall. Outside bars are, by their very nature, extremely hard work but they can be very rewarding. The whole purpose of having a car as large and as tough as the Jeep is so that I can take everything up to the hall and back again in one go, without having to worry about it.
For the first time I was actually going to be using my own bar equipment, rather than hiring it at some exorbitant cost from the brewery. Over the years I’ve gradually been making a collection of glassware and beer dispense equipment and, finally, I have all the gear to run events away from the pub without having to panic at the last minute that I’ve forgotten something. The final piece in my jigsaw was the beer tap and clasp unit that goes from the lager keg, through the cooler and on to the bar. A local landlord helped me by providing the final few widgets I needed to make it all work and, on Friday morning, I started putting it together.
A friend was staying so I roped him in to helping me make sure it was all working and, down in the pub’s cellar, I hooked the clasp to the keg, pushed the pipes in to the cooler, took the feed from the gas and put the one remaining pipe in to the back of the beer tap. It all looked good, so I pulled the tap.
Nothing happened.
I switched the tap off, fiddled with the pipes, then pulled the tap again. Still nothing.
Leaving Gary holding the beer tap for a moment I went in search of some power, thinking that maybe bringing the cooler to life would help, when suddenly I heard a yelp from my friend. Turning, I noticed that the gas had suddenly decided to come through but the pipe wasn’t in the back of the tap properly and, consequently, Carling was spraying everywhere, predominately over Gary.
Quickly unclipping the clasp from the keg, I stemmed the flow and tried not to laugh at my beer-soaked companion. A quick inspection showed the problem had been that a line hadn’t been connected properly to the gas and this was quickly rectified. It all worked beautifully. The next job was to load it all in to the car.
Friday was grey and cold with a slight breeze but, fortunately no rain. I was grateful for this because, as we stepped out in to the car park, I noticed that the rear left tyre on the Jeep was looking a little deflated. This was a pain, but between the two of us it wouldn’t take long to change the wheel, so I quickly whipped the spare tyre out from the boot and bounced it on the ground, where it made a slightly lifeless thud on the tarmac. It was at this point that I noticed the ruddy great nail sticking halfway through it.
“It wouldn’t have helped anyway,” Gary said, pointing out that the locking wheel nut key has been completely shredded to the point of uselessness, meaning that the wheel nut won’t come off the car. “I’ve got a pump, however.” So, using Gary’s Halford’s pump we blew the tyre back up – and then watched as it went back down just as quickly. We tried this a few times, just to make sure it definitely wasn’t going to stay up, but with the tyre expanding and contracting quicker than Oprah’s waistline, we decided to use an entire canister of tyre sealant to re-inflate the wheel and allow us to at least get the equipment up to the village hall and back again this weekend.
Once that was done, I could call around the local tyre suppliers and see how much it would cost to get the tyre replaced. Amazingly, none of them can remove a locking wheel nut...
So, I’m sitting here three days later, still driving around on a tyre inflated by a canister of sealant. It’s going to be a fun week...
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