The Real Men (18/6/13)

You know those mornings when you accept that it's the other blokes that are the real men and not you? The mornings when you admit that you just don't know how things work but everybody else does? When you know that it's all the others that are the proper adults and you're just a guy who works in a record shop?

Yeah, one of them.

I got the tyre sorted out his morning, you know, the flat that I'd been pumping up every other day because I was too tight to buy a new one?

Went to the garage round the corner, "Do you do just tyres?"

No, but he knew somewhere local that did. So I went there.

"I've got this flat that needs, well hopefully fixing if you can do that? It's like a slow puncture?"  Because, and I can't state this often enough, I don't know how these things work. I've no idea whether you can just fix a flat tyre or whether it needs a whole new one (which is probably why garages end up selling me a new one)

It turned out that it could. There were tyre irons and power tools and removing the wheel then taking the tyre off the wheel rim then there were hoses and some kind of liquid then a type of glue then the tyre was back on. Ten minutes. Weeks of putting it off for ten minutes work. And all this time. Stood half watching them sort my car out with their magic and half watch one of the lads changing a tyre on a truck the size of my house; a feat that involved locking nuts the size of your hand and a six foot long spanner.

Halfway through  asked an obvious question "is it okay to pay by card?"

I'm assuming that nobody had ever been daft enough to ask that particular one before. The poor bloke managed to stop himself from laughing and pointed out that cash would be more than acceptable. Right, I said, I'll go the cashpoint, indicating my readiness to walk. Go in the car he said, it'll only be a tenner.

Ten Pounds. Ten minutes work, tyre sorted, able to drive to Coventry on Thursday with the likelihood of a) being stuck on a hard shoulder or b) killing both of us severely lessened. Result.

Apart from the obvious fact that once again I'm more than aware of my place in life and it's not amongst the practical and useful because I quite simply - Do. Not. Understand. How. The. World. Works.

Still, in consolation, I bet they couldn't have turned the experience into a 500(ish) word piece within the hour could they? Eh, could they?

What do they know about Gene Clark's solo albums? Can they write songs? Have they got a blog? I bet they haven't have they?

I've just paid a guy ten quid for ten minutes work. Sum total of earnings from writing an hour a day for the last one hundred and sixty nine days? Zero.

I think we know who's winning here don't we?

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