Anyone else remember the halcyon days of air lines at petrol stations? I mean, obviously they never really had a sensible gauge on them, you had to squint to align the guides, try and work out what pressure it was actually reading, guess how much you were putting in, wrestle with the fact that they couldn't even give you a locking nozzle and half the air used to make a bid for freedom. That of course is all assuming that the gauge was actually visible and hadn't been filled with oily water or had its markings mysteriously part-erased. But the one important factor is that they were free. No charge. Gratis. Just turn up and use it.

Twenty fucking pee now, I mean why? How much money does your average multinational oil corporation really make on its forecourt air lines? When Shell admitted they'd been bullshitting for years about how much oil they actually had, and the share price plummeted, was there ever a scene in the grand scheme during which a lowly but heroic finance boy came bursting breathlessly into the crisis meeting in the board room, waving a bunch of printouts and gasping briefly for breath before declaring triumphantly, "We're saved! We'd forgotten about all the twenty pees from the air hoses! We've never been richer!"

Was there fuck.

So there I am at the Total garage in Hook, counting myself lucky that today I actually have a twenty pee bit in my pocket (it's like the bastard pay and display car parks, if like me you regularly have bugger all change, what the fuck are you supposed to do?) so I'm ready to go. Two minutes of air for 20p, two minutes? Not much but it'll do. In goes the money and I'm off. First tyre, should be 33, currently 31. 'Pfffft' goes the machine. But because it's a new fangled one, I don't get the little gauge to play with, this is one where you select your pressure and the machine does it for you. Oh fucking great. Because the machine goes 'pfffft' and then stops to have a think. 'Is that enough pfffft? - hmmm - no, let's put some more in' ...pfffft... 'is that enough now? - let's see - oh honestly! It needs more!' ...pfffft... 'really, that must be enough - just checking - oh hang on, the phone's ringing, back in a mo.'

I'VE GOT TWO MINUTES YOU FUCKING TWAT, NOW STOP TOSSING ABOUT AND PUMP MY SHITTING TYRES UP!

Needless to say the cocking thing stopped just as I was getting to tyre number four. Fortunately for my thus-far unblemished criminal record I eventually suffocated the urge to kick the shit out of the big silver twat, and put another bloody twenty pee in. Forty pee to put 2psi in four tyres, Jesus, that's about a litre of air or something, it's half the price of the fucking petrol.

Petrol companies: if you're going to be bastards enough to make us pay for some air, do you really have to be bastard enough to make the fucker run out after three tyres?

And if smug cock posts here telling me they've got a Reliant Robin they can fuck off.