The Most Valuable Card in My Wallet

For the first couple of years after I passed my driving test, the most valuable thing in my wallet wasn't my driving licence.

Two of my early cars — when breakdown cover was less a precaution and more a necessity.

It was my dad’s AA membership card.

My dad’s subscription had a brilliant feature: it covered the person, not just a specific vehicle. As long as I was travelling in the car, we were covered. It didn't matter whether I was behind the wheel of my own runabout or sitting in the passenger seat of one of my friends' cars.

In the early 1990s, my friends and I drove a patchwork fleet of elderly Escorts, Fiestas, Sunbeams, Minis and others. Breakdowns weren't a rare misfortune; they were a weekly scheduling event. Rust, tape and optimism were the only things holding those cars together.

Looking back, I'm still not entirely sure whether I was invited on road trips because I was good company, or because I was carrying that yellow plastic card.

“Scott, are you coming?” someone would ask.

There was never any discussion about why. My presence was simply a rolling insurance policy for a group of teenagers driving vehicles on their absolute last legs.

We spent more evenings than I care to remember standing at the side of the road, peering into steaming engine bays.

Between us, some of us knew a reasonable amount about cars. Others knew rather less. We could change wheels, top up fluids and occasionally diagnose whatever unpleasant noise had just started coming from beneath the bonnet.

But there were limits.

The AA membership proved essential with my friend's Mini. Its oil warning light came on, but he insisted on continuing to the next pub before stopping. By the time we arrived, the AA could rescue us, but probably not the engine.

Then there was the night I got completely lost. It was pitch black, and I drove straight through a ford. In hindsight, the sign saying Watery Gate should probably have warned me.

The engine promptly cut out.

It also proved invaluable when one of my newly acquired second-hand alloy wheels decided to part company with the rest of the car—although that is probably a story in its own right.

Before long, my dad's card was well and truly being battered. Half the time, it wasn't even my car that had given up the ghost. It was a mate's snapping clutch cable, and I just happened to be sitting next to them.

Eventually, the inevitable happened.

My dad actually needed to call the AA himself.

When he got through, the operator questioned the astonishing number of recent call-outs on his account. With a stern warning, they suggested that if this frantic rate of breakdowns continued, his membership might be withdrawn.

The irony, of course, was that he had barely used it.

I had used it to rescue half of Leicestershire.

He did, quite reasonably, complain about the number of times I was using it.

I doubt my dad ever imagined that having a family AA membership would become one of the most valuable things he ever did for me.

It wasn't the towing.

It wasn't the roadside repairs.

It was the confidence it gave me to set off into the world, knowing that if things went wrong, someone would come.

Parents spend years quietly putting safety nets beneath their children.

Most of the time, we don't even realise they're there.

Until years later, when we look back and realise how often they caught us.

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