Locked out !!

Being locked out of a house naked is very embarrassing.
In the middle of December it is also very cold!

It was a quarter to eight in the morning and I decided to have a bath before going to work.
The ground floor flat we lived in at the time was unusual in that the bathroom was an extension to the end of the house, and in order to go to the bathroom you had to go through what was the old backdoor into a small utilities room. From there you could gain access to the back garden through the real backdoor, or go into the bathroom via a separate door. The door leading to the garden was fitted with a basic lock, but the door leading back into the house was laden with bolts and locks of all kinds.

So, there I was, relaxing in the bath. My beloved Helen comes in, brushes her teeth and excitedly says her good-byes as she sets off for the first day of work at her new job. I finished my bath and head back into the house, except I can't get back in as my 'dearest' has locked the backdoor and GONE TO WORK leaving me trapped in the bathroom!
Not only can I not get back into the house, but I cannot even get out of the bathroom as I had no key to unlock the backdoor with! All the windows which open are tiny and positioned at the very tops of the window frames!!
There I was. No keys, no money and just a single white T-shirt for warmth.
Oh joy!

I sat for a little while and hoped that Helen would realise what she had done and come back home to rescue me. Pah !

An hour passed and it slowly dawned on me that she wasn't going to appear for at least another 9 hours.
I was left with no option but to try and break out of my prison and find a telephone. Eventually I decided that the easiest way to escape would be by taking the window out of the back door. I had ruled out smashing a window as there would be broken glass everywhere and I wasn't wearing shoes or socks. Fortunately I found a pair of secateures and an old wallpaper scraper, and so set about removing it. Over the next hour I carefully chiseled away the beading and putty around the window in an attempt to remove the glass. Soon however I realised that this particular pane of glass was never going to budge.

Disheartened, hungry and very cold I gave up and retreated back to the relative warmth of the bathroom and shivered to myself whilst I formulated a new plan. Forty minutes later Plan B was hatched. This new plan involved taking the glass out of the window frame above the toilet and jumping the six or seven foot on to the ground outside.
Thankfully for me removing the glass was easier than I first thought and within half an hour I had my escape route.

Getting out of the bathroom was in fact the easy bit, what I had yet to figure out was how I was going to contact Helen, as:
(a) I didn't know the name or telephone number of her new company, and
(b) I had no clothes to wear!

I rummaged around the bathroom and found an old yellow blanket and a coat which must have once belonged to our landlords 5 year old son. I wrapped the blanket around my waist and put the coat on.
The sleeves on the coat came up to my elbows and the blanket went down to my ankles. Even if I could squeeze out of the gap, who the hell was I going to approach looking like this! I had to decide whether to climb out of the window naked and risk been seen (and possibly getting something vital caught on the window frame), or staying dressed and instead run the danger of accidentally hooking the blanket on to something during the jump.
My modesty won the day. Effectively it was an all or nothing situation. I had to make sure that I had everything with me, as once I jumped there would be no way in which I was ever going to be able to get back in again. Clambering up on to the toilet cistern, I carefully eased myself on to the narrow window ledge, and with one big push I jumped through the 60 x 80 cm window frame.

My cold feet contacted with the even colder ground and I collapsed into a heap as the sharp pain of the impact shot through my entire body.
I sat for a while and gently nursed my throbbing feet.
The only exit from the back garden was the passage down the side of the house which was festooned with sharp stones and litter of every kind.
I walked down and swept away all the debris in front of the gate with my bare hands and eventually forced the gate open. I made my way to the front of the house and rang the doorbells of the other flats in the block, and rang and rang... and nobody answered!
I stood freezing at the front door of the house wearing next to nothing wondering what the hell to do next!
I thought for a while and decided that I was left with no option but to call on the assistance of a firm of estate agents with whom I was friendly with down the High Street in Willesden Green.
I took a deep breath, hitched up my skirt, and set off.

I walked all the way down the High Street of a busy shopping centre in the middle of the day wearing nothing but a giant yellow frock and a coat that was twenty sizes too small for me. I dare not look anyone in the eye as I walked, I just kept my chin up and continued straight ahead. I crossed over a pedestrian crossing where cars stopped dead as the occupants sat and stared.
At one point I saw a mother grasp her child's hand pulling the child closer as I walked past.
Despite the circumstances I was desperately trying to keep a straight face. I thought about how funny I must look. If I were to start laughing now it would only go to confirm peoples suspicions that I really was mad. I clenched my teeth and pressed on.

Eventually I made it to the estate agents. By now my feet were bleeding, I had gone this far and there was no turning back. With one deep breath I walked in. At first they pretended not to notice this strangely dressed person who had just entered their office. It did take them a few seconds to recognise me, but once they had they showed no mercy.
Five minutes later the barrage of Hari-Krishna jokes stopped and their tears of laughter dried away. I was able to tell my story to a captive audience, of how I had been trapped in a bathroom for four hours with no keys, no money and no clothes. Of how I had to break out of the bathroom, and of how I had walked down the busy High Street to get here.
Their giggles slowly turned to sympathy and I telephoned work to explain why I wouldn't be coming in that day. To cut a long story short my work provided me with Helen's old company telephone number from our emergency contacts list and luckily for me Helen had rang her old firm half an hour earlier to let them know her new number!
I telephoned Helen and she turned up forty five minutes later with a bag full of clothes and a very sheepish look on her face.
For her too it was not the best way to start a new job by having to ask the boss for a lift home on her very first day so that she could rescue her semi-naked boyfriend from an estate agents office! On walking through the estate agents door to a resounding cheer from the lads, she took one look at me and burst into laughter. I changed into the clothes she had brought and I set off home.

Helen returned to work and I spent the rest of the day putting the bathroom window back in. Seven hours after first entering the bathroom I ran a fresh bath of water, climbed in and soaked away all the muck and pain.
This time however the backdoor keys stayed firmly next to me, on the floor.

Brian Fattorini 17/12/96

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