Skittish

My car was booked into the garage this morning for its twenty-thousand mile service, so when I got home yesterday afternoon I emptied it of all the little personal bits and pieces you'd expect. Boots; more boots; emergency anorak; spare shoes; hard camera case; camera; binoculars (2 pairs); fleecy hat; heavy gloves; cold-flayed face repair cream; maps; nature reserve leaflets; bean bags (2) for shooting through car windows; picnic rug; bird food; water fowl pellets; reusable coffee mugs (4); energy bars (2 boxes); wet wipes and tissues (assorted); phone cable and adapters (2); dark glasses (3 pairs); middle distance glasses; Covid masks (2); bits of paperwork and receipts; child car seat; dog towel. The usual stuff.

"Leave the service book and the locking wheel nut where we can easily find them," had been the instruction from the garage. So I put the booklet on the passenger seat... and then realised that I hadn't come across the locking wheel nut. In all the years and all the cars since the locking wheel nut became a Thing, mine has always lived either in the glove compartment or in the central arm rest thingy between the front seats, whichever allowed it to rattle less, and in all that time I've never lost, or even temporarily misplaced one. But this one seemed to have gone missing.

I reported to R, who searched the car himself and then watched me go through everything I'd removed from it. But to no avail. Then I phoned the garage. Bring the car in anyway, they said - they would have a look for it, they might not need to touch the wheels at this service anyway, and if they did they had a few orphans sitting around that might fit, and also a master set that might work (not so very masterful then, I thought). And failing all that, they could always order me a new set. Then R and I searched the car again, and the loose contents again... and finally gave up, exhausted.

This morning the car sailed through its service with no extra work required. But the garage couldn't find the locking wheel nut, none of their 'orphans' was mine, and the 'master set' mysteriously absented itself from the conversation. "So would you like us to order you a new set?" enquired the service manager. "Obviously then I'll need to book you back in to have them fitted. Which might take an hour or so, because we'll need to chisel the old ones off." Of course they would. Because they didn't have the dedicated socket. My face must have shown pretty clearly what I thought about someone taking a chisel to my currently pristine wheels, because she then said, "Or... you could maybe have another look at home, and see if you can find it...?" At this point in the conversation it emerged that we'd been searching for two different things: me for the normal lump of anonymous metal, and she for a small grey plastic box, which, she assured me, is how Toyota package their locking wheel nuts. Given this new information it seemed worth our while to check the car again, so we went out together and delved down into the bottom of the boot, where there's a special little holder for tyre stuff - but sadly it didn't contain the locking wheel nut box.

Back home, R came out to rejoin the search, and after leaning into the boot for about fifteen seconds said "Ta-da!", and stood up with an - unboxed - wheel nut socket in his hand. The tyre stuff container, it transpires, has a special little slot for the locking wheel nut socket, and this was where it had been nestling comfortably all along, quietly minding its own business through three previous searches by me, two by him, and one each by a garage technician and the garage service manager. 

Relieved of the horrible possibility of someone taking a chisel to my car wheels, I was almost as skittish for the rest of the day as this Large Skipper, who was bouncing so fast around the red valerian on the patio that out of fifty or so frames I shot in his general direction, only four were in focus. Perhaps he'd just had some good news too.