Locked out of my London flat at 2:30am on a Tuesday Morning

It is always an appropriate time to take a selfie... even at 2:45am when you're sitting on the floor stretching your legs out at a weird angle because you're locked out of your flat and it seems like a good idea.

My life is like a game of 'Fortunately, Unfortunately', I swear... like whatever fucked up thing happened it always works out and it's incredible but ridiculous all in one and that is exactly how things played out last night.

Everything was great.  It was a lovely evening.  I had been looking forward to it for days.

I went to my friend's house for gluten free vegan curry and brownies.  Everything was delicious.  I brought wine, we drank wine, we played with Chomsky, Isaac and Darwin (she has pet rats), we played poker and everyone had a lovely night.

All of a sudden, it's 2am and probably time to go home.  They offered me an airbed, but I was like "it's chill, it's like a five minute Uber", knowing I'd sleep much better in my own bed and also knowing that I had little desire to have a sleepover with three rats, no matter how highbrow their names.

I left their flat, walked around the corner and onto the road and considered walking home and saving myself £5-7, but then I was like "probs best not to, there's only one other person on this street right now and he could be a rapist, let's just Uber".  At this point, I also realised I kind of had to pee, so yeah, let's Uber.

I called the Uber, only to discover there were no Ubers.

I tried again.

No Ubers to be found... in CENTRAL LONDON.

Feels like a personal attack, but okay, if you say so Uber.

So obviously I started walking back to mine, thinking I'd try again when I got to the main road but by that time I'd decided "Fuck it, let's just walk... It's only a mile and I've watched enough crime shows to know how to fight off a criminal".  Not drunk, just delusional.  There were also more people on the main road, so I felt like unless they all ganged up against me, I would probably be fine.

It was a warm evening night anyway and I thought it'd be nice to see if I could actually remember the way back because I've only walked to hers once on the way over and I had to use Google Maps.  Oh... and I guess there was one other time when I was drunk and some med student we met in the pub walked me back most of the way.

Anyway, that was my genuine thought process at 2am... It'll be nice... to see if I CAN find my way home... alone... in the middle of the night.  Did I mention my phone was on about 35% and recently had a habit of going from around that number to 1% without warning?

Obviously I just had such a high level of faith in myself that I could remember the way and get myself home, and fight off criminals if necessary.  For someone with low self-esteem, I think pretty highly of myself.

It turns out I can, in fact, get myself home which is as much of a surprise to me as it is to anyone who knows me reading this.  This was probably the only part of the night that I can consider a personal success.  That and the sheer quantity of food I managed to eat.

I got to the main road near my flat and I had to pee quite a bit by this point.  I actually saw a bus driver peeing into the park a few minutes earlier, but I'm like "I'm not judging, if I had a penis, I'd be joining you."

Wait, is that okay?  I don't know penis etiquette.  I mean, if girls had dicks we'd probably join a peeing stranger... No, not okay?

Anyway, I walked past the pub near my apartment building and the end was in sight and that's great because I get to pee soon and then I can go to bed or watch Netflix or eat or whatever.  Like, it's 2:23am... home is good!

I saw my building, I saw the door, I was ready.  Despite the fact that four flights of stairs awaited me, I was ready to conquer them and get to my bed.

I opened my bag, discovered that the curry my friend had given me to take home had leaked over some of my stuff, but that's chill because I can clean it up in five minutes when I get inside.  This is the part where I realise I don't have my keys, right?

Nope.  I have my keys... little bit of curry on them but I wiped that off on my hoody and I approached the door.  I got my key-security-thing-that-gets-me-into-the-building and pressed it against the thing-that-allows-me-entry-to-the-building and...

nothing happened.

I tried again.

You guessed it, it didn't work.

It was almost 2:30 in the morning and I couldn't get into my building.

I tried like seven times, it was clearly broken but every time I went to it with a naive optimism that only served me with wasting time.

Okay, so what can you do in this situation?  My phone was almost dead, but I could call my friend and see if that airbed is still available and then try to Uber back... So I sent a Facebook message, which didn't send and then I was like "Fuck it, I'll just call her"... which also didn't work.

The thing is, after I came back from America a month-ish ago, my phone has been on Pay&Go and the lowest possible tariff for a reason I don't remember.  I think I wasn't topping it up much because I want a contract again and didn't want to waste money.

Obviously, I haven't managed to do that yet because of who I am as a person, which is why I was completely out of calls and texts and data.

At this point, I am on 29% battery, but very aware of the fact that my phone is a manipulative liar and could die at any time.

Regardless, I was like fuck it, what else can I do?  I'll just try to top it up and hope it doesn't die in the meantime.  Which is exactly what I did, only to discover/remember, that I am really bad at topping up my phone.  Like, don't judge me, it's super confusing, there's so many options and numbers to press and they give everything stupid names like "do you want a bolt on or a voucher or a unicorn tariff with a side of pickles" and I don't know what the fuck half these things are.  I tried to top up three times, but just gave up to preserve my battery a little longer (fuck knows what for, perhaps so I could write something in my notes folder and hide my phone in the bushes in case I got kidnapped).

After that, I decided I could probably climb up onto the roof of the entrance and over the balcony to the first floor and then go from there.  I attempted it.  I was wrong, climbing onto a roof is harder than it looks.  All these years I thought I was a mastermind at breaking into places, but last night I had to face the reality that I grew up in a bungalow and consistently forgot to close my windows.

(This was taken this morning, not last night and that is why it is daylight but I didn't have the battery life to justify more than one photo last night and I went with a selfie)

I walked around a bit and looked to see if any of the lights were still on in the other flats - luckily one of them was AND on the second floor AND I could hear chopping or something (super weird at like 2:50am, but you do you, boo).  I was like great, I'm in, problem solved, I just have to awkwardly ask this stranger to let me in.

Okay great, what number are they?  What number do I have to call to get in?  I couldn't see the door properly because it was obstructed by trees and stuff, but I worked out by method of deduction that being between 73 and 74a, they probably lived at 74.

I awkwardly paced for a bit because I really don't want to meet my neighbours, especially not like this, but finally worked up the courage to push the numbers 7 and 4 into the call-an-apartment-number-box-thing... only to discover that it doesn't work.  It literally just kept saying "call cancelled" and I was like okay, machine, I mean it feels personal, but I'll try to carry on believing that you're just a robot without feelings of hatred towards me for now.  I had bigger problems... I mean, not really, because if this was the machine just bullying me, that was my biggest problems, but it seems kind of unlikely.

I figured it was okay though, because this person lived on the second floor, so maybe I could just call out and ask them to let me in.  Okay, but what does one call out in this situation?  No really, because you can't just shout "HEY"... no one would go to the window for that.  Do you just shout, "HEY! YOU THERE! NUMBER 74!"? That's super weird.

As I mulled over my options, number 74 turned out their lights and went to bed.

I was back to square one.

I sat down outside again, feeling sorry for myself, remembering that I still needed to pee and wondering if I should just go and pee in a park, but decided against it because if someone comes or goes I am NOT missing it because I'm peeing in public and honestly, based on how the night was going I'd probably just end up getting arrested... although, that would sort me out with a place to stay...

Three people walked past, two boys and a girl and they looked pretty young... The girl looked like she pitied me and wanted to ask if I needed help, but said nothing.  I had a strong desire to be like "oh so like my key isn't working, I'm not just weird or like stalking someone who lives here or anything..." but they probably couldn't help me and I think it would indicate that I was weird more than my silence... so what was the point?

After they left, I decided it was time to try to break in again.  I climbed back up and tried to pull myself onto the roof.  Didn't work, but I noticed a flat opposite had boxes outside their house so I borrowed them to stand on and tried again.  I still couldn't get on the roof, so I sat on the floor again.

I tried again to top up my phone because I'd been here for at least half an hour now and I was honestly just super bored without the internet... This time, I managed successfully... to top up twice the amount I needed, wanted, or could afford, because I accidentally pressed an 8 instead of a 0.  Why wouldn't the robot on the phone not understand that topping up £18 is weird and clearly I meant £10?!

Whatever.  At least I had data.

My friend with the airbed was clearly asleep... everyone I knew in London was probably asleep because it was 3am and some people have jobs and stuff so I texted my friend in America, not because I thought he could do much to help but because I thought he'd be awake and I wanted to whinge to someone who might actually respond.

He suggested I wake someone up, I suggested that if someone called my doorbell at 3am, I would neither let them in nor like them very much.  I told him I was going to try to break in again, which he supported, but it turns out that I'm still not a ninja.  I managed to get half way up to the roof by climbing against the tree, but I realised it would be impossible/incredibly dangerous to even attempt getting onto the balcony that way because of the windows.

So, I just sat back down and decided now would probably be a good time to cry.  It's not like I had anything else to do, so I tried to start crying a little... not much, because to be honest, I'm so used to stuff like this happening.

I started crying a bit and my make up started running a bit and it hurt because there was mascara in my eyes, but by some miracle I actually had tissues in my bag.  Now, because my eyes had a few tears in them I didn't inspect them closely enough to realise that there was a small amount of curry on my tissues.  I don't care if it was only a korma, NO ONE WANTS CURRY IN THEIR EYES.  Then I was real crying!

Anyway, I calmed down a bit after my 3-5 minute crying session, because it stopped hurting and I had just accepted that this is what it is and I will just have to wait until someone goes to work in the morning and lets me back in.

I sat and I waited and I hoped that someone in my building had one of those weird jobs where they start at 4am or something... also, at some point during all this my phone decided to go from 26%-1%. I decided to put it on airplane mode and stop using it in case there was an emergency and I needed to call someone, but honestly, how far is 1% battery going to get me?  Also, was this not already a low-key emergency and did I have anyone to call?  But whatever.

It got to 3:34 and I'd got to the stage where I was actually just sitting there feeling incredibly grateful that this had happened on such a warm night and that it wasn't raining and that I lived in a pretty safe area... as far as I know.

And then... AND THEN... SOMETHING HAPPENED...

SOMETHING TRULY WONDERFUL ON MORE THAN ONE LEVEL!

A BOY WALKED AROUND THE CORNER

AND IT WAS FUCKING MAGIC, I SWEAR

I mean not really because he was a boy, he wasn't hot or anything, well not my type, he must have been around 20 and he had blue bits in his hair, so let's not get too excited on the boy front, but you know... not all heroes wear capes.

Anyway, so this boy comes round the corner and he looks at me and he's like "are you locked out, miss?"

I don't know why he called me miss, maybe he thought I was super old, maybe that's a normal thing, I don't know... I didn't care, I was bored and alone and I really just wanted someone to let me in to my building.

"Do you want me to let you in?"

"OH MY GOD, do you live here?"

"Nah, but I can let you in, did you lose your keys?"

I explained to him that my thing isn't working and was like what am I even supposed to do? Like who do I call in this situation? And he was like, umm.. call your landlord...? Smart kid, smart kid.

Then he was like,

"Don't worry, I'll let you in" in the calmest fucking voice ever and I questioned for a second whether there was something really obvious I could've done here and had just totally missed it and was about to be super embarrassed and pissed off.  This was not the case.

He proceeded to place his carrier bag full of Sunbites onto the wall next to my curry.  I guess, sometimes it's 3am and you really need to go out and buy some 'healthy' crisps, it happens.  He walked towards a different part of the balcony where there's like a 'window' type thing made of mental bars, gets onto the wall below and like jumps up at which point I'm just like "OH MY GOD NO STOP WHAT"

He responds by actually stopping, because he doesn't know me and has no idea that I shout "NO STOP WHAT" when I'm in shock so then I follow up with "I mean no, don't stop, but like is this actually happening? This is insane"

I'm pretty sure it was actually happening, unless I'm in some kind of very convincing dream right now where I'm writing a blog post at 4:30am, which has actually freaked me out... why did I even think that?  I'm genuinely a little bit scared I'm about to wake up outside. Fuck.

Anyway, he laughed at me like I was some kind of crazy person, because it has now occurred to me that he clearly does this kind of crazy shit all the time and honestly, he did it with such ease this was probably one of his lesser impressive manoeuvres.

So then he does some kind of legit ninja stuff (which can probably be more accurately described as basic parkour) and like jumps up, grabs this window thing and somehow throws himself over the wall  of the first floor balcony and then runs down the stairs to let me in.  LIKE IT WAS NOTHING.

He held the door open for me while I got my curry (I mean no shit did he hold the door open, that was the whole point in his little endeavour but whatever) and he came back to reopen it when I was struggling because I got my bag caught and then he went on his merry way.

I can honestly say I don't think I've ever ran up to the fifth floor of a building with such glee.

Basically, I thought it would take me a maximum of ten minutes to get back inside my room from my friend's house and it took me nearly two hours PLUS the hour I spent typing this up, meaning I will be going to bed at probably closer to 5am.

Good job, Jamie.

Obviously, this key thing was still an issue this morning so I contacted my landlord and he called me and this is when I discovered that my landlord is a great guy.  He literally asked why I didn't call him and when I said it was because it was 2:30am, he replied with "okay, but you know I've gone out to tenants at 4am before, it's no problem!" and I was like wow, you nice human, I would not do that ever never nope no thank you bye, but okay.  Then I told him that my phone was dead anyway and he just laughed and said "oh okay hahahaha, sounds like you had a fun night".  Like, did you not listen to the story, sir?  I was trapped outside for almost two hours, but clearly he thinks I was probably hammered and that's why this situation occurred.

But whatever, that was one of the best worst things that's happened, it's all sorted now, I have a new key-security-thing-that-gets-me-into-the-building and I only chipped one nail in the process.