A Virginia Water desk, not a national queue

Start with the hour. Tyre places shut at six and the tyre never checks the time. This one keeps a desk that answers at four in the morning and a van that goes out at four in the morning, because that is when a sidewall on a GU25 drive stops being an errand and starts being a problem.

The work itself is ordinary, done in the right order. A replacement when the wall has gone. A repair when the hole sits where the law says it may be repaired. Run-flats, and the wide sizes that live behind the Wentworth gates. Twelve volts back into a battery that died overnight. A flatbed when the car is past saving at the kerb.

The patch is drawn round Virginia Water and then pushed out — Egham, Staines-upon-Thames, Chertsey, Ascot, Bracknell, and west as far as Reading, Newbury and Basingstoke. Every one of them has its own page on the patch page. If yours is not on that list you get told on the phone, not after a van has set off to find out.

There is no branch anywhere, no unit on a retail park, no second name over a door. Kit lives in the van and the van comes to wherever the car stopped: a drive, a business park bay, a lay-by off the A30.

Same number at 3am as 3pm. Ring 020 4634 1013 for anything happening now, or write to help@dayandnighttyres.co.uk for anything that can wait for daylight.