Key problems!

I suppose it had to happen some time. I locked myself out of the house. 

When I go out for run in the morning I usually take a minimum of stuff with me. So I do not take with me the ridiculous bunch of keys that sits on my handbag most of the time: keys to our house - two needed to open the front door for some reason - the key to my daughter's old house - still being sorted out - and the key to her new house and the key to my bike lock! In addition to all that, there are mini versions of a couple of store loyalty cards and a similar mini version of my library card. 

Someone somewhere decided that it was good to have such cards as a key fob. I think that is the correct term. In reality what they do is give me the opportunity to confuse Tesco's system completely by trying to swipe my Go Outdoors loyalty card at a Tesco till. This makes the till go into overdrive. Great fun! 

Oh, and in addition to all that stuff, there is a little Spanish bull hanging from the key ring. This was a present from my small grandson when he went to play chess in Madrid. He seems quite pleased that I carry it around with me most of the time. Anyway, when I run I usually remove from the key ring just the two keys to our front door and pop them in the front pocket of my bright pink bum bag. The other morning I thought I had done that as usual. When I arrived home and looked for my keys, I discovered I had a ring which held my Tesco card, my Go Outdoors card and my library card. No keys! And the cards are quite useless for opening doors. So I had to ring the doorbell. Which did not increase my popularity as Phil had been up late the night before and was still in bed! Oops! 

This is not the first time I have locked myself out of this house. The first time was years ago when the children were still quite small. We returned from a walk, or possibly from walking home from school and found that I had no key with me. At that time there was a pane of glass in the back door and I knew that the key was within reach if I could remove the glass. I almost managed to do this without breaking it but at the last moment a corner broke off. But we did manage to get into the house. Of course, this made it extra evident that a burglar could have got in the same way so the space where the pane of glass had been was covered temporarily with a piece of wood and not long after that a stronger door was installed. 

My most spectacular locking out occurred in the house we lived in before we moved to this one. That house was situated a little further out in the countryside, nestled prettily in the bottom of a valley. The children were even smaller than they were on the lockout described above. One was still in a baby buggy and even the bigger one was not yet old enough for school. We arrived home from somewhere or other only to find that I had successfully locked us out. To add to our woes, Phil was away in Germany with a school exchange party and not due back for about ten days. Otherwise we might have parked ourselves at a friend's house until he returned. 

After a moment's panic, I walked the three of us round to the back of the house where we found that I had indeed left the kitchen window open. Just what I had hoped for. It was one of those small top windows, the sort you open to freshen the place up more than anything else. I was younger, skinnier and more athletic in those days and so I sized up the situation and decided that I could almost certainly manage to get in. Onto the outside window ledge I climbed, reassuring the older child that all was well and that he was to look after his small sister. I wriggled my top half through the window gap, lowered one hand down onto the inside window ledge and sort of flipped myself in. Some part of my brain must have remembered the manoeuvre from gym lessons at school, where we had to flip ourselves over parallel bars. Never did I think I would have occasion to be grateful to my much-disliked PE teacher! And then I was in, located my keys, unlocked the back door and collected the children from the back garden. They were completely unfazed by the whole procedures. 

Needless to say, I never again went out leaving the kitchen window open. There are skinny, athletic burglars out there as well! 

Since those two incidents I have managed to go somewhere between 25 and 30 years without locking myself out. This is not counting hotel rooms, of course; that is a different matter and much more easily solved. And, of course, cars. 

I once succeeded in closing, and locking, the door of my (by then rather rickety) Renault 4 with me on the outside, the keys in the ignition and the engine running. Fortunately the sliding window on the passenger side of the car was notoriously unreliable and easy to slide open if not completely fastened. So I was able to get back into the vehicle. And no, there was not much danger of the car being stolen. It was too disreputable-looking even for joyriders, although we loved it dearly. And none of us had mobile phones or laptops or tablets to leave on the seat to attract thieves. 

Until I locked myself out the other day, I thought I had become a much more respectable and responsible member of society in my older age. Clearly I am mistaken!