In hindsight I should have bought shares in the Crown King Tube Company, located in Hangzhou, China (what factory isn't?), because over the course of five years I must have bought about 30 inner tubes ... maybe 40.
Pre-June 2014, this wasn’t such a problem as an easy two minute walk took me to the Bangladeshi bicycle repairman across the square, chop-chop, housed in the al-Yamama shopping plaza, a veritable treasure trove of amenities providing everything a man needs in life – a 24-hour supermarket, the Abu Ali fish shop, another place looking vaguely like a restaurant (the flies stopped me ever going in), two bakeries (how I’d love some of that Afghani tameez with cheese and fool!), a hardware store, a gents and a ladies tailor, a sports goods shop, a stationers, a taxi office, a laundry, a barber’s shop, a couple of electronic goods stores with attached repair service, a cash machine that didn't often work and, most importantly, a bicycle bloody repair man who spent all day pumping up tyres for the kids and me. It only needed a pub and free-thinking women to be all-encompassing. Yet, in their infinite wisdom, the local council decided to close it down and put all those businesses out of business; countless jobs lost; local residents forced to drive long distances to new, way more expensive shops with far fewer services other than poofy men’s perfume emporiums and Fat Burger.
In the bible there is a story about a burning bush from these parts that didn’t burn. Huh? Well, all I can say is that I wish it had, as life would be much easier.