A 'TYRING' START TO THE WEEK

I guess if I try to look on the bright side of things - this morning was light, dry, sunny and warm. I was not driving alone with Marcel and Charlotte in the dark on the Kingston Bridge at 50mph at 7am, rather stuck in a traffic jam at 8am with Thomas, who unlike me did have the strength to unscrew the bolts on the wheel, it was payday so I could buy a new tyre and because of the speed, the car didn't skid out of control. However, I can think of easier ways to start a Monday morning, and I would rather still have that £111 in my pocket :-(

Oh and the Citroën handbook was a great help :-\ The first instruction it gave us two, not-very-adept wheelchangers was to 'remove the embellisher'. It was 8am, we'd just had a tyre blow up on the motorway - we stood there like a pair of numpties scratching our heads - the what??? Then suddenly re-reading how to remove it, I suddenly realized they were actually referring to the hubcap - I write dictionaries for a living - I have done for 16 years and I have never once heard the word 'embellisher' used to mean hubcap - so a blowout can be very educational - I made an instant mental note to add a category to the next big dictionary - a definition reading something along the lines:

embellisher n (=hubcap) an obscure term used in car handbooks to puzzle stranded motorists: 'Before jacking up your car, first remove the embellisher'

I wonder how often statistically you have a tyre explode anyway - this is my second in 22 years of driving. So that is approximately 1 blowout ever 110 000 miles, not too dangerous I guess!