Posted by NikkiT2 on February 11, 2004, at 11:21:11
So.. my husband took today off work to pamper me a little! One of favourite things when he is off work is to go down out local greasy spoon cafe for the fabulous Thai food they do.
We live in a flat.. Its the middle floor of a lovely Victorian town house in the middle of London. We share a hallway with the top floor flat, so we have a front door of our own that leads onto hall way. Then another main front door that leads outside. Being central London we have very good locks.So, we get ready for lunch, grab the bags of rubbish we need to put outside, go out into hall and slam our front door behind us. I ask hubby for the keys, and he starts searching his pockets.. he has no keys. I have no keys. We're locked in the hallway between the two front doors *l* Both of us have a major fit of giggles going on trying to work out how we get either out of main door, or into the flat.. Hubby tries kicking the door in but we are so safe that doesn't work at all.
Then, I find some fuse wire I stashed out there (electricty meters and fuse boxes for all 3 flats are in hallway), so I twisted it all together and used that to lever open the letter box so I could see out.. I saw next doors nanny walking past so shout to her and stick my hand out.. she comes over and I explain what happened, so she very sweetly called an emergency lock smith out.
45 minutes later (and we've read all the junk mail that had piled up in there!) the lock smith turns up and finds our predicament highly amusing!!
he quite quickly (well, 15 minutes) breaks into the lock on our main front door by drilling it out.. was just a 5 bar chubb lock so nothing major for him.
Then he moves onto the yale lock on our private front door. First he tries what normally works (quite worryingly simple.. in fact VERY worrying!), but that fails, so he says he'll have to drill it. So, he gets his fancy drill bit and starts drilling.. then we hear him saying "oh no, fuck".. he boke his drill bit. Goes to van to get another.. that one breaks!!So, he calls his boss for advice as he has no drilled the whole lock out, and you can see the parts, but still it won't open.
He boss advises something so he goes to his van.. We hear swearing. he's locked his keys in the van *lmao* he kciks the van in frustration and the alarm on it goes off (VERY loud as its a lock smiths van!).. but the remote control for it is on the key ring in his van.
He calls boss.. boss comes out and gets into van!!!Boss looks at lock.. looks at us and says "you tried to kick the door in didn't you??" yes.. we did.. "you've twisted the mechanism, we need to remove the entire lock by hand" *laughing*
So, they remove the entire lock!!!
Its was ust such a comedy.. I couldn't help but laugh through the entire thing.. I could't get angry as it really felt like a joke!
So.. after paying for an emergency call out to a lock smith (though he did give us 20% discount for cash *w*), and having to buy two new locks, and getting new keys cut for the main one (3 other people use that door) it really wasn't a cheap Thai lunch at all!!! *l*
Hubby is now busy fitting new locks!! Thank heavens he's had years of experience at changing locks (he was a squatter in his wild youth *l*) else that would have been even MORE money!! *l*
So.. lesson learnt today?? DOUBLE CHECK YOU HAVE YOUR KEYS BEFORE SHUTTING THE FRONT DOOR!!!!
poster:NikkiT2
thread:312034
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040209/msgs/312034.html