TWO WHEELS GOOD

Those of you travelling east on the M62 last might have seen me lurking on the hard shoulder waiting for a breakdown truck. I'd been trundling my merry way home and was just thinking about a move from the middle to the fast lane when I realised that I could turn neither left nor right. My steering had locked.

Happily my onboard computer displayed little message saying "Steering Fault" which was handy as I'd never have guessed as the road began to bend under my feet and I remained dead on course for the Little House on the Prairie, the crunchy way.

Eventually I managed to exert sufficient pressure to slowly coast towards the hard shoulder, hazard-lights-a-blinking, and call for help.

Quite exciting.

On a separate but similarly vehicular note, I took my bicycle in for a service the other day. I asked the geeks to give it a good fettle up and be sure to fix my gears which won't make the leap onto the big cog (dead technical, me).

Anyway, yesterday Mrs B collects it. When I'm eventually dropped off at home with the car in a flashing-lighted rescue truck (much to Snicket's delight) I go to check out my bike. Mrs B hands me the service run down and there is inscribed a little note saying "Chain won't move onto large cog...is it needed?" Now apart from the fact that I'd specifically asked them to sort it out out, isn't that like saying saying " well I've serviced your Porsche* but it won't go any higher than third, but I didn't think you'd be needing those cumbersome big numbers..."

The bike's going back today for gears 15 to 21.**

*I don't have a Porsche by the way.
** Maybe that should be gears 1 to 7.