Puncture Wound

Today

My brother David is in the process of de-cluttering, to use a current bit of jargon. This is taking him a good long way down memory lane. Today he shared with us a picture of an ancient Black Magic tin - "in the days when they were magic" enthused David. Izzie commented that it was the old button box and David pointed out that an earlier label said it was his "Bike Box". (Blimey, it's like Time Team at David's place!)

In My Day

"Bike Box" can only mean one thing: it's the essential box you take with you in case you have a puncture.

While I have never learnt to change a car tyre, preferring to rely on my husband or the AA, I did have to learn how to repair a bicycle puncture. I don't think that tyres were as robust in those days - nowadays, what with off-roading bikes and high-tech design, it doesn't seem to be a problem.

The puncture would, of course, occur at the point of no return. Often I didn't have brothers to help me and was impossibly far away from anywhere I could walk to for help.

Let's see if I can remember what I had to do. First make sure that the "bike box" isn't actually still resting on the hall table at home. Next, with the help of a lever (I seem to remember using spoons on occasions) peel off the tyre. The actual puncture would be in the inner tube which was nestling inside the tyre.

Now look hopefully at the inner tube. On very rare occasions you could see the gaping great hole. More often you had to pump up the tube to locate that nasty hissy hole. Was the bicycle pump attached to the bike? Oh good. Now, the most efficient way of locating the actual puncture was to hold the partly pumped inner tube in some water and watch for bubbles. This often meant a fruitless search for puddles; sometime you just had to spit and hope for the best.

Having found the bubble, you marked it with some chalk (essential part of the Bike Box) so that you wouldn't lose the place.

Then you dried the place and smeared some evil-smelling glue over it, followed by a suitably-sized patch cut from some rubberised canvas in your box.

Finally the whole thing was reassembled onto the wheel. Somehow getting the tyre back on was far harder than getting it off and you went round and round, ruining several spoons until the tyre was back. Now to pump it up! Has the valve got lost in the undergrowth? Oh, here it is.

All pumped up and ready to go? If you were lucky there had only been one puncture and you could carry on, now about two hours late, on your way. If not, the tyre deflated as soon as you put any weight on it and the whole process had to be repeated.

You needed to be made of stern stuff to go out on your bike back in those days!