A long time ago, I went on a coach journey. It was a living episode of any Sitcom – no detail was unimportant in life’s conspiracy to make me look like an insane tramp. Well, this story isn’t quite the same; it was more like life, instead of taking three days to plan something intricate, just decided to fire off a few bolts of piss in my direction, to see what happened.
It was a Saturday morning, and my flatmates were out, so I was walking around the house naked. The curtains were open, so when I walked past a window I dropped to a haunch and shuffled. If there was a tea-towel to hand, I would briefly hold it over my crotch, like a matador, whipping it around me as I turned, to alternately cover my balls and assss as required. However, when I realised we’d run out of milk, I resigned myself to getting dressed and facing the day, in as minimal a fashion as possible.
I fished the basic level of clothes out of the tumble dryer – too-baggy trousers and a T-shirt – and slipped my sockless feet into some tattered trainers. Get some milk, make some coffee, then get back to the safety of showing my balls to top-deck bus passengers.
It was three hours before I had to meet my friends in the pub. Three hours is a lifetime, if you’re really unlucky, and your mum sits on you.
So I wheeled my bike out of the house, and slowly clicked the front door to.
I pulled the door slowly enough so that – at first – the bump of the Yale stopped the door locking. You know that feeling? As your slow pressure moves the curve of the Yale lock, the resistance from the lock lessens, until the door almost closes itself? And you’re doing a routine mind-check of everything you need to go to the shops, but you’re not actually thinking properly, you’re just saying “wallet, keys, phone” to youself like a stupid song in your mother’s voice, over and over?
And the abrupt snack of the lock suddenly brings you around, and you think “Oh! I’ve just locked myself out of the house!”
Feeling a little bit panicked, I texted my flatmates. The replies came – Jim was in York, showing his Japanese girlfriend a walled city. Chris was in France. France was a nice touch, I thought. You couldn’t just be a little more needlessly far away, could you? Maybe a nice French-speaking nation like Morocco. Couldn’t you have tucked yourself away in fucking Marrakech, you stupid, gallivanting prick? And YORK? If both of you thought that spending a weekend in YORK seemed like an exciting escape from the rat race, then frankly I don’t want your keys.
I walked over to the café opposite. Coffee would calm me down. I was half-way across the zebra crossing when I remembered I’d left my bike outside the house. Clopping back to the house, I was amazed to be suddenly facing sideways, and running with a wobbly Pac-Man ghost-face into our rosemary bush. My wallet, which I had remembered, leapt out of my pocket, I pushed the bush away whilst making a “ffft! ffft!” gesture with my wrists, and my trousers fell down.
My wallet chain, which I had bought after leaving my wallet on one too many tables, had snaked around my gatepost, and ripped the button off my trousers. Go back a few paragraphs, and you’ll see that I’m not wearing underwear. Any unchecked movement will now reveal my everything to everyone, without the safety of windows. The bicycle is now worse than useless to me – I can’t ride it, as I would be effectively nude within seconds. I can’t lock it up, as my keys are on the same keyring inside the house. So I have no alternative but to walk, one hand guiding my bike, and one hand holding up my trousers in that bunching grip that the cooler, old-fashioned-tramps-who’re-really-millionaires-you-know use.
I walk to our Letting Agency, and held the door open with the side of my head, trying my best to explain the situation. But it was hopeless. The landlady had given the key to the builder, who was out of town, the Letting Agency didn’t have a key, and neither of my flatmates were back for two days. By now, though, I was laughing helplessly, and had to stop every five minutes to ‘phone everyone I could think who’d find it funny. When I’d locked myself out, I was pissed off. But now I’d locked myself out and ripped my trousers off, I couldn’t have been happier.
And at this stage, I like to think – for the sake of dramatic Hollywoodness, rather than any belief in God or fates – that life saw that it had lost, and couldn’t throw anything else at me without giving away that it existed, and was a cunt. I went back to the café, because by now I really wanted to see what a coffee would do to me. Hearing my story, the owner lent me the belt he was wearing, and said he’d look after my bike. Then I went to meet my friends in the pub, and when I told my story, one of them remembered that I’d given him our spare key while he was sleeping on our sofa. And suddenly, as quickly as everything had turned to amazing shit, it was all fixed.
This left me with a urgent and good-natured impulse to get really fucking pissed, which I did without delay.
