Last week was weird. Especially Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

The UK has been sweltering for the past few days, with humidity so high that I can only compare it to Florida, and temperatures up to 40C/104F in the direct sunlight fronting my house. There is so much water in the air that the streetlights cast a cone of light downwards, as if on a misty day, although there is no true mist.

Wednesday finished badly, chipping my car’s rear paintwork when loading a toolbox into it; I stopped in on Dave because of an issue with his burglar alarm but that was all sorted. En-route I passed many bikers without realising that it was Lord Derby night, which explained the numerous speedtraps on the roads. Leaving Dave I stopped to jetwash the car in the failing twilight, and decided the best thing to do was drive carefully home and go safely to bed.

I woke at 0412h to the sound of fingernails being dragged down a blackboard in my brain. A hideous banshee wail. Joyriders trashing a car. A fanbelt slipping on God’s Cadillac. I had no idea what it was but my mind tracked its movement up Green Lane, turning into Sandy Lane with a thump, fading gradually into the distance.

After a moment the reconstructing audit-trails section of my brain woke up, and said: thump? thump! that thump was approximately where you parked your car last night!

Oh bugger. It was never going to let me sleep until I checked.

I got out of bed, slipped on sandals, sweats and a Wile E. Coyote T-shirt, grabbed my million-candle spotlight torch, and went out to investigate.

I walked around my car, twice, finding no new damage to report. This was good. What was interesting however was the scent of molten rubber in the air, and the set of dashed “chalk-marks” in the road surface along Sandy Lane.

Hmm! A trail! I wonder where it goes?

So I followed the trail up Sandy lane, around the corner, past the cherry trees and phonebox, into the open square of houses, and – it appeared – into someone’s drive. There was some evident commotion inside the house. Two cars were parked-up – a sporty little hot-hatchback, which seemed to square with the joyriding theory – and a small purple Ford Fiesta.

Waving the back of my hand at each car in turn, I was surprised to detect the Fiesta as being the one radiating heat from tyres and exhaust. Hmm. First impressions are not always right. Oh well. Anyway, I knew where the culprit was, now I could go back to bed.

I got as far as the phonebox before stumbling over a grapefruit-sized ball of spring wire, sitting in the road. Black, tempered, and warm, and again smelling slightly of rubber.

Ah!, thought I, this explains a lot. I know what this is. It’s a bead.

I picked it up and walked back to the now reasonably awake household. When I was a few yards from their front drive, the householder stormed-out with a definite attack is the best form of defence ‘tude on, and (effortlessly pronouncing punctuation) demanded:

Who are you and what do you want? We’ve seen you walking up and down the road. Hmm?!?!

I proffered the wire, and in my best apparently-slightly embarrassed former public schoolboy accent, proclaimed:

Oh! Hello! Yes, good morning! I’m so sorry to bother you, but I think this might be part of one of your tyres! I thought you might like it back!

…at which point, he changed totally – “Oh no, it’s my bleeding daughter’s, isn’t it? What’s she gone and bleedin’ done?”.

Considering this to be an invitation I walked with him over to look at the Fiesta properly, and shone my spotlight on the one wheel of the car that had not been visible from where I’d stood previously; all that remained of the wheel was a naked alloy hub, torn, scratched and quite thoroughly shagged from having been driven-on without rubber for the entire distance through the village.

He went inside to deal with his progeny – the last I heard he was deftly outsourcing the problem to his wife – whilst I decided to take a morning constitutional and tracked the now-identified scratchmarks all the way back to the centre of the village, about 1.5 mile’s worth, before thinking hang this and going back to bed.

Thursday night was even hotter – there was an accident on the Motorway, and they re-routed the traffic along the A30 through the village.

I walked to the pub.