Just picture it… We have just pulled up outside a tyre shop on a small industrial estate. Chris gets out, leaving Mum and me in the car, and he goes into the office; a minute or two later he comes out closely followed by a very short-haired lady dressed like a mechanic and wearing big boots; and they talk beside the car but we can’t hear very well because Mum and I are inside and Chris’s window is down only a couple of inches.

“Is that a man?” whispers Mum, which is quite uncommon for her because she is a little deaf.

“No,” I answer normally because the lady has gone back inside.

“I didn’t think so after hearing her talk – she sounded like a woman – but she looked like a man. Didn’t she?” says Mum.

“Yes, a bit,” I reply. For a moment I wonder what she would have made of the recent winner of the Eurovision Song Contest – the bearded man who sang like a lady and dressed in an evening dress.

Chris gets back in the car.

“We have to wait a few minutes until the car ahead of us has been done,” Chris offers.

In a short while a middle-aged man comes out to see what kind of tyre we need. Chris gets out to tell him.

“Just bring the car over there,” the man points; he smiles at me through the window and he disappears.

Chris gets in the car again and moves it into the correct position for tyre removal and replacement. But it isn’t on a ramp – they are going to do it on the tarmac. I can see a young man bringing out a jack.

“Should we get out?” I ask Chris before he leaps out of the car again.

“No, I think it’s alright, the chap didn’t say anything about getting out,” says Chris.

The older man joins the lad and puts the jack into place. He looks at me and smiles.

“Are we light enough to stay in the car while you jack it up?” I ask amazed (especially as I can remember some the occasions when my Dad swore at lousy jacks).

“This one will take up to eight tons,” the man chuckles.

I laugh too and then, like Calamity Jane, I think to myself, “Hey that ain’t quite so funny!”

The new tyre is on, and Chris is about to pay at the office, when the older man comes out from the dark of the garage again.

“Hold on,” he says concerned, “I think we’ve got the size wrong. Is it a sixty or a sixty-five?”

“Sixty-five,” answers Chris, already stood and waiting to pay.

The lad comes out with the big, strong, eight-ton weight-bearing jack in his arms. I can’t bear the thought of sitting in the stuffy car and being jacked up and down again, so I get out and adjust my clothes.

I’m wearing green harem trousers trimmed with black and a new cream-coloured gypsy top with black embroidery on it; obviously, I’ve never worn the combined outfit before because the top is new. When I glanced in the mirror during the morning rush I had thought that it looked okay but now I’m not so confident; I wonder if the ample gathers around the middle are a bit bulky and unflattering (normally, I prefer close-fitting clothes to show my good points). Chris walks over to me while I’m considering this matter.

“Darling, do you think this outfit is fattening?” I ask.

“Rather!” Chris responds with enthusiasm and a sexy look in his eyes.

“Ooh!” I say wounded yet also perplexed at his strange reaction.

“The outfit is fascinating!” he says, noting the wound and making sure that I know he had misheard in a good way. (Chris is a tad deaf, as I may have told you before.)

“Not fattening then?” I ask.

“Nonsense,” he says, “I could as easily have heard it as ‘flat …erring’ ”

He is a bit of a wit (as I may have told you before).

What spare tyre?