"I helped Santa get to school on time"

"It was just before Christmas, which is a busy time for us, when I got a call to go to Kingston in south-west London, as a member had a puncture. I set off for what I assumed would be a fairly straightforward job.

"Well, you can imagine my face as, when I got there, I was greeted by Father Christmas – or at least a member dressed up as the big man. It turned out that he was on his way to a to a local school when the trailer he was towing his sleigh on got a puncture.

"As it was very close to the time when he was supposed to arrive, I decided that the best course of action would be to load the sleigh onto my truck and drive it and Santa to the school. After all, you can’t let the kids down can you?

"We got there with just enough time to unload the sleigh before the children came out, and for me to get off back to the trailer to fix the puncture. So that was the first (and probably the last) time I became one of Santa’s little helpers. But in this job you never know."

Keith Davies, AA Patrol