Unfortunate events

An aching foot, a sick daughter and a blown tyre added up to a less than Merry Christmas for Business Correspondent RICHARD BAKER. But was it bad luck, or was it all too predictable?

A few years back, my doctor took me off a certain type of tablet. A few months back, I bought a new car. And a few weeks ago, I started revving my daughters up for Christmas.

A series of totally unconnected events, it would seem. But they call came together, Lemony Snicket fashion, and conspired to deliver what can only be described as a series of unfortunate events. And a crap Christmas.

The blow-by-blow account starts like this. I suffer from gout every now and then. Now, the cliche has it that gout is the rich man's ache brought on by too much port and venison.

It isn't. It's an excruciating condition caused by your body's inability to process a certain acid. The acid crystallises, collects in a toe joint (don't ask me why) and delivers pain similar to a drill in the foot. So you might say it's a bit worse than a stubbed toe.

I first got clobbered by it a few years back, and the doc put me on a course of tablets that naturally lower your acids. A couple of years later, after no signs of any further problems, he took me off them.

All well and good until this year, when the odd ache and the occasional pain began to emerge. Beyond popping Ibuprofen (and thank you Nottingham's own Dr Stewart Adam, the Boots chemist who discovered it), I shrugged it off, figuring occasional pain was something I could live with.

That was mistake number one. The week before Christmas one of those odd aches became an occasional pain. Only it didn't stop there. Within a couple of days it turned into searing agony so bad I couldn't get a shoe on my swollen foot.

So I went back to see the doc. He put me back on the tablets.

Meanwhile, my daughters had been getting more and more excited about the run-up to Christmas. They're young, they love it - the decorations, the carols, the food, and most of all the 'which-Nintendo DS Lite-game-will-Santa-bring' speculation.

The excitement had reached fever pitch by Christmas Eve. Literally, infact: in the wee small hours, lying awake with an aching foot, I heard the unmistakable sound of a Technicolor yawn coming from eldest daughter's bedroom.

She wasn't ill. She had simply worked herself up into an over-excited tizzy about the biggest day of the year and been sick. May be I hadn't helped with the constant 'I wonder what Santa's going to bring'. So we'll chalk that up as mistake number two.

Mistake number three? This is where the car comes in. Shortly after Christmas, we popped into town to swap a prezzie. We were about a quarter of a mile from home when a loud pop came from underneath the car. Pulling off onto a garage forecourt confirmed the worst: a front tyre had blown.

I couldn't get the wheel off no matter how hard I tried. Struggling with an aching foot and a just-recovered daughter in the back, I may have uttered the odd curse or five. But I'd really got no one else to blame but myself.

How come? This is where you realise that my crap Christmas wasn't down to bad luck. So let's play the game of consequences in reverse order.

In the summer, I bought a new car, one with alloy wheels. The alloy wheels needed wider tyres, wider tyres are more sensitive to your suspension being in fine fettle, and the potholes and road humps that interrupt my journey to work knocked it out of true. So the inside edge of both front tyres was slowly being worn away to the point where one of them blew.

The wheel wouldn't come off because it's alloy, which reacts with steel on the wheel hub and sticks to it. This is why tyre depots uses WD40 and a plastic mallets to help your worn-out tyre off.

Lessons learned?

I should have remembered some schoolboy science when I bought the car in the summer. If I had, I would have bought some WD40 and a plastic mallet on the same day.

I should have paid attention to my aches and pains and gone to see the quack earlier in the year. If I had, I might have been popping pills instead of hobbling.

I should have toned down the pre-Christmas excitement a bit. If I had, my eldest daughter might have enjoyed the big day itself a lot more.

It's easy to be wise after the event. It's easier still to write a blog than it is to wrench off an alloy wheel when your foot hurts and your daughter's off colour.

Happy New Year...