A tyre-ing day

I was due to head off to the Hollywood Bowl bowling alley near Tonbridge Wells today, having missed last week's session due to getting stuck in a very lengthy tailback on the M25. However, my wife spotted a thin metal shard embedded in one of my tyres and, as I didn't fancy having it blow out on the motorway, I headed off to the tyre place at St John's (see extra photo). It is in a picturesque setting by the Basingstoke canal (main photo) and also has the merit of having a very nice cafe nearby. The tyre place was  rather busy so my initial coffee and pastry was followed an hour later by a coffee and bacon bagel. I caught up on some newspaper reading and might have had a walk along the canal had it not decided to teem with rain. It turned out that the metal shard had not penetrated the tyre,  but they did replace a worn valve on another tyre which was causing it to slowly deflate. So, not a completely wasted morning but bowling will have to wait another week.