I HAD an unfortunate motoring experience on Monday/Tuesday which was put in a much better light by the actions of a very kind 'Good Samaritan'.

My car suffered a catastrophic puncture at about 10.45pm on Monday on the Lydney bypass on my way home. It was very dark and I had little idea how to access the toolkit, so I decided to crawl home with a flat tyre and deal with it the following day. I have a serious heart condition, so I had to wait for my wife to be available in case I overstretched myself whilst dealing with the problem. This meant that it was early afternoon before I started my attempt. I immediately found the access to the jack and what the makers laughingly call a spare wheel was seized and the tyre wouldn't even partially reinflate.

To cut a long story shorter, I used the jack from my wife's car to attempt the job. This was not ideal but her 'spare' is identical to mine. The wheel studs were very tight, but I did eventually manage to loosen them with the help of heart tablets. The wheel wouldn't pull off.

At this point, help arrived in the shape of a man, who seeing two elderly people struggling stopped to help – I'm 69 and my wife is 15 months younger and uses a walking stick. He was the embodiment of kindness and had sufficient extra tools to help the whole job. This included undoing the access to my spare wheel and jack, only to discover the jack had rusted to the extent of disintegration, so I could not have used it anyway. When he eventually left, after dealing with all the problems, I was able to go and have the tyre replaced.

Today, my wife and I were discussing the incident. We are both sad to feel that our society has changed so much in our lifetime that we think this man's behaviour is so unusual now. He really is an example to the rest of us. Unfortunately, I have no means of thanking him properly for his extraordinary kindness. All I know of him is that he calls himself "Shaggy" White, lives at or near Parkend, and drives a Peugeot 405 (in which were two dogs).

I should very much like your paper to publish a word of thanks to him to acknowledge his (sadly) remarkable act.

– Brian Martin, Cinderford.