The puncture-repair rite of passage

The new copy of Cycle, the magazine of the CTC, is out.

Obviously the stand-out item is my sensational article on page 41 about a visit to a puncture repair outfit factory in Lincolnshire (right). I posted here about the visit in June. Now, to complement that, and the magazine article, is a short audio souvenir. James Milnes of Weldtite, the company in question, takes you on a quick trip through the factory:
Play sound file (twaud.io, MP3, 1min 51sec, 1.3MB).

I didn't get space in the article to discuss puncture repairs as a rite of passage. One day when I was about eight or nine my dad decided it was time to start showing me the ways of the world. His knowledge of things sexual was pretty sketchy, to be honest - he thought being bisexual meant seeing two women at a time - and his attempts to tackle birds-and-bees were mumbled and confused. But in puncture repair he was on home ground. God knows what Freud would make of that.


Anyway, one special evening he took me into the kitchen, with bowls of water and newspapers and oily rags all laid out. He showed me how to ease the tyre off by clever positioning of tyre levers, which took some time and you had to smoke a pipe to help you think. How to find the hole by looking for the tiny, jewel-like bubbles that streamed out from the breach when you threaded the tube through the water.

How to gently rough up the surface with the smallest piece of sandpaper I'd ever seen to a grey, fibrous texture that put me in mind of school dinners. How to apply the glue, which wasn't actually glue, because it's Rubber Solution and it vul-can-ises, you see, and I nodded and repeated, vul-can-ises, though neither of us knew what vul-can-ises was. How to wait five minutes, now this is important, because otherwise it won't vul-can-ise, and mum came in asking if we wanted a cup of tea and dad smilingly ushered her away, because this was man's work and it was serious.


Then we applied the patch and made chalk dust so the sticky bits outside the patch wouldn't glue the tube to the tyre and mum said you're not getting dust on the floor are you Tony I'll have to hoover and dad said no love, it's alright and winked at me and I grinned though I didn't know why. And we put the tyre back on which meant dad had to light his pipe again and pumped it up nice and hard and dad bounced the bike a few times on the kitchen floor to make sure and I took it outside and rode it round the block and it was fine.

The whole process took an hour and a half. Finally we cleared up the kitchen and mum made us a cup of tea and I knew a great transformation had happened. I'd started the evening a boy; I'd finished it still a boy, but a boy who was cross because he'd missed Dr Who.

And now it takes me about five minutes to fix a puncture and I smile and think dad, what was the big deal? Hmm. Wonder if Freud was a cyclist.

Rivals not a patch on the puncture repair kings

It was mainly work that took me back to Hull over the weekend. I was doing an article on a factory in north Lincolnshire that makes puncture repair outfits.

Yes, yes, I know, I'm just boasting about my glamorous lifestyle. The smell of the rubber solution, the roar of the fork-lift.

You've never heard of the company, but they supply Halfords, Decathlon and everyone, and the puncture repair outfit in your bag almost certainly came from this very production line (right).

This lass from Barton-on-Humber was the last person to touch your yellow crayon, tube of glue and sticky patch before you did.

Of course I got to the factory by bike, a glorious five-mile hop over the water via the Humber Bridge on a fabulous day. The sky was flawless cobalt, the wooded slopes a rainforest green, the river its usual colour of diarrhoea. I was inspired enough to make a quick video (right) of the return crossing, the journey back across the great divide into The North. It wasn't just much more pleasant than going by car. Much more important, I also saved over a fiver on tolls, as bikes go free. You can tell which side of the Humber I come from.