George Cowan: 'The rule is to make sure you don't get stuck yourself'

MONDAY

The shift starts at 4pm today and my first job is to clear the snow off the frozen windows of the van and get the heater working. There's not much point in being on breakdown patrol if you can't get your own van working. I head up to East Kilbride and play catch-up on various jobs that have been outstanding because the snow is slowing everyone down. The main roads are OK, but once you get on to minor roads it gets pretty tricky. We don't have special vehicles - they're just normal vans - and the golden rule in this weather is to make sure you don't get stuck yourself. Most of the jobs are relatively straightforward - battery problems or cold snap issues - and I manage to get everyone up and running. The last job was at XScape car park at Braehead.

TUESDAY

Today's a rest day for me because I worked all weekend. I spend an hour clearing the snow and ice off the van so it's OK for tomorrow and then go and pick up my five-year-old twins from school. We have a snowball fight and I lose. I try not to think too far ahead when it comes to the weather - there's not much I can do about it and I prefer to just take each day as it comes. Having said that, looking out tonight, I know tomorrow's going to be bad.

WEDNESDAY

I'm out at 8am this morning. My first job, which should be a 20-minute journey, takes an hour and a half to get to. A guy has locked his keys in the car with the engine running. The car is like an oven inside, which is just as well as he's blue with the cold. There are a lot of dead batteries, and it takes so long to get anywhere because people are driving very slowly. I get one guy with a broken windscreen wiper. He tells me he cleared the snow off the windscreen before he switched it on, but I'm not convinced. I think he started up the wipers, they hit the snow and ice and that's how it broke.

THURSDAY

Today I break my golden rule: I head out to North Lanarkshire and help a guy who has run out of fuel, and then in to Shotts. I come off the main road into a housing area and even though I'm going really slowly I get stuck and can't move another inch. The thing is, I know I've got the ability and the equipment to get myself out - I've got snow chains and my shovel and a bucket of grit, but it's incredibly time consuming and takes me about 45 minutes to get out of it. Difficult day.

FRIDAY

This morning I'm called in to deal with a real emergency. A job comes up on my van computer that a car has got stuck in a ditch and the driver is locked out of his car. He turned down a road that was closed, but didn't see the sign because it was covered in snow.

He tried to do a three point turn and slid into the ditch. When he got out to have a look, the door shut behind him. Poor guy. He's not having a good day. I walk down the road so the same thing doesn't happen to me, and manage to get him into his car and call a special recovery unit to come and pull him out of the ditch. He's so grateful. That's the great thing about this job, particularly in weather like this: everyone is absolutely delighted to see you.