It was a big match day for Arsenal. I’d got the ‘football room’ suitably attired for Bob with the lucky Arsenal gnome, the two Irish leprechauns and the Gunnersaurus. They were lined up looking towards the TV. We were waiting for our friend to come round and watch it with us.
Bob had recently had a bit of an obsession about door handles. He kept trying the handle, pushing them down fiercely (several times) to such an extent the latch was sticking and I couldn’t get into some rooms. The only way I could get the latch to move back was to get my bank card, slide it in the gap, and push the latch back. In the end I had been so annoyed that I’d actually taken the handles off the door in the ‘ football room’. I left the door wide open with a note sellotaped to it ‘DO NOT SHUT’ and put a square pouffe in front to hold the door back to the wall.
Our friend came round and the game became very exciting. The beers flowed and we became totally absorbed in the match. Suddenly I realised the door was shut.
I screamed out in horror. ‘ The door’s shut!’
‘It wasn’t me.’ chanted Bob over and over (who was sitting on the pouffe.)
‘It must have been you though, Bob because you’ve moved the pouffe and shut the door at the same time.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ Bob repeated.
There was no door handle to get out and the door was fast shut. My purse with the bank card was in my handbag – the other side of the door. My phone was also in my bag so I couldn’t even phone a neighbour for help. I had a vision of us all being locked in until the postman came the next day, and us waving frantically at him shouting ‘Save us. Save us!’
How could we get out? I remembered the front door was unlocked – if we could get out of the window. But the window was so small. There was no way I could get out as my back was playing up and if I tried to twist it my muscles might go into an agonising spasm. Our friend is a 6 footer so I couldn’t imagine he could get through the window. But Bob was thin and small perhaps I could persuade him somehow to try to get out.
Bob was the right size but could he understand how to climb out of the window? I started to try to make him understand.
‘If I tipped you up, Bob, out of that top window and held onto your ankles you might be able to do a forward roll like the SAS, do you think you could do it?’
‘Not me.’
That was when I wished I had paid more attention to those Paul Daniels magic shows where they put people into a box and they become very small people, contortionists I think they are called. If only I knew how to make myself that small I could have got through the window. I had a flash back to a show Bob had booked where I had watched a young lady supposedly chopped up with a sword and all the time they were in a tiny space where the sword never went.
Then our friend saved the day.
‘I think I might be able to get out of that window’ he exclaimed.
‘ Really?’ I answered, a little hope in my heart.
We cleared the windowsill of the ornaments and pictures and our friend climbed up. It was at this moment that the ridiculousness of the situation took a hold of me and I became a hopeless giggling mass. Desperately trying not to let our friend see me laughing as he was struggling to balance with one leg either side of the frame. He became that very small person I had seen in the magic shows.
He managed it! He jumped down onto the path. He walked in through the front door and between us we did the bank card trick in the edge of the door where the latch was, and managed to push it backwards so the door opened.
Well, that was a game to remember for all the wrong reasons!
Thank goodness Arsenal won.
