"We fished the keys out of the drain"

"As an AA Patrol, you often have to deal with call-outs involving car keys. Usually they have been accidentally locked in the car or lost in some other way. One such situation happened to me recently and I not only needed the help of a fellow patrol, but I also had to use a way of retrieving them that was straight out of a comic.

"A Mr Powell rang our call centre to request help as he had dropped his car keys down a drain. When I got there I could see that getting them out would be a problem – especially as the drain cover was too heavy for me to lift on my own. I decided to enlist some help and found out that a colleague – Andy Harding – was able to assist me. However, when we got the drain cover off we couldn’t see the keys as they were immersed in water. Even if we could locate them, the drain was too deep to reach into. Some lateral thinking was needed. I went to my van and got a length of wire and tied a magnet to it. Then I went back to the drain, sat down like an Eskimo at an ice hole, and lowered it down. After a few tries I caught the keys! It was one of my more successful fishing trips."

Kylis Morgan, AA Patrol