I was away for a while, then I came back.
Now I might have gone again. It's all about the words Y...
I was away for a while, then I came back.
Now I might have gone again. It's all about the words Y'see?
Member since:08.01.2002
Reviews:46
Members who trust:21
There was a story told by older boys when I was a younger boy about The Snake Pass, or to give it a more exciting moniker, the A57, which was a road that left from our village on the Cheshire/Derbyshire borders and took you over the moors of the High and Dark Peaks and over into the mysterious world they called “Meadowhall.” Hold a torch under your chin and join in.
A Husband and Wife were driving at night time on the Snakes Pass, through mist and low cloud. Their car breaks down, and steam pours from under the bonnet, so the dutiful husband tells his wife to stay in the car, and lock the doors whilst he headed off into the pitch darkness to get help from the house whose lights were twinkling in the distance. Several hours pass and the wife is beginning to get worried as the rain is lashing down and the car still won’t start. In the rear view mirror, she can see a shadow in the back window, which is quickly followed by a Tap….Tap…. Tap on the glass. She turns around hoping to se her husband, but there’s nobody there, so she unlocks the doors to let him in and out of the rain when there’s another, louder TAP! TAP! TAP! on the roof of the car. In the dark and through the rain-washed windscreen, she struggled
to see the figure who stood in front of her car, but she knew one thing. The figure was holding a stake………..and on the end of the stake……..was her husband’s severed head. Muahahaahaaa….
I didn’t pass my driving test until I was 24, but I was a nailed on member of a breakdown service from the age of 12. Schlock Horror.
Tell this story to a Tweenager on Hallowe’en these days, and the modernity of life has ruined the tensions somewhat. Couple are driving in a scenic landscape when they break down, a woman rings RAC on her Mobile, and they’re rescued in about an hour and home for supper. No-one got wet.
Becoming a member of the RAC is joyously easy. Go over to www.rac.co.uk, or simply stop at any motorway service station, day or night, and speak to the man outside. Not the one smoking. The one with the clipboard in orange.
The most challenging thing about the membership is deciding what sort of member you want to be. There are five different levels of social status when you’re stranded on a moorland, starting with ‘Roadside’ where they’ll come to try and rescue you, but if they can’t fix you there and then for an annual fee of £35, but it’ll cost extra to get you home, guv’nor. Then there’s ‘Roadside Recovery’ where you’re alright if you breakdown away from home, but if you leave the interior light on overnight then you’re on your own my son. Through to ‘Roadside Recovery Home Cover Onward Journey’ where for £135 they’ll not only rescue you from the stick waving madman up to six times a year but then they’ll take you and your family to the seaside if you ask nicely. I plumped for the ‘Roadside Recovery Home Cover’ level, officially making me upper middle class, and all for the current cost of £105 a year, with ‘no claims’ discounts applied when you don’t call them out. I’m still paying the full whack per year thanks to a succession of stubborn vehicles, who were determined to leave me on the hard shoulder of a variety of our nation’s highways and byways. Or they’d just simply refuse to start thanks to a lethargic battery or a leaky something. Each time I’ve called the 0800 free phone number, each time from my mobile where it’s not free, the service has been both friendly and efficient, none more so than the day my 2 year old nephew managed to lock himself inside his mums car when we were on a day out. Ingeniously the cover applies to the individual and not the vehicle, I was able to put the half-brick down and call out the man in the van and he set about saving the day with wires and magnets whilst a toddler tore his way through an A-Z page by page seemingly unperturbed by all the commotion.
The RAC has been around forever. They’ve been around for longer than cars have, starting as they did in the late 19th century, and with uniformed patrols since 1912. By my own unfounded but potentially accurate calculations, there were probably 6 people with cars in 1912, so they mustn’t have been too busy back then but even in today’s car blanched society, the longest I’ve had to wait was 3 hours. 3 hours sounds terrible but at the time I was in a services after the engine had made a bid for freedom from the car one bolt at a time, so I guessed as a man with instant access to fast food, coffee, sweets and toilets, I’d become the victim of the priority given to the lone females or those with kids and probably caravans. Eventually the Bright Orange oracle of vehicles arrived, and not only was it arranged to take me back home, but then they went and dropped the car at a garage of my choice for repair, which saved me pushing it for miles, so it was well worth the membership fee for that one breakdown alone.
Since owning my new car, I have no intention of breaking down, so to get my money’s worth, I’ve started hitch hiking, aiming only for those with rubbish looking cars.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Aug 28th, 2009
very helpful by (100%):
