I rang the bell to the upstairs flat, but John must have been out because - no answer. I sat in the garden for an hour and contemplated - the stars, the feasibility of putting a brick through the small window at the top of the door so I could reach in and open it that way... And then, at half past midnight, Sam, my next door neighbour, staggered home from the pub and I asked him if he knew how to pick locks. He didn't. He gave the door a few experimental shoves, insisted on checking to see if he could get my key to turn, and then invited me in for coffee while I decided what to do.
I decided extreme measures were called for and accepted the offer of caffeine. (Some of you already know how bouncy and hyper that makes me. This time I got chatty.)
Upstairs was Sam's wife Pauline, who was very welcoming and we got talking. She said she usually heard John turn his music on at 1am when he came in from the pub, so at about one we went back downstairs to see if he was there. He wasn't. I decided it was time to apply brick to window so I could open the door the hard way.
It was perspex.
Yes, I managed to shave a few bits of toughened plastic off with my big pointy rock, but it wasn't budging, shattering or even cracking under my hardest swings. So Pauline offered me her sofa for the night.
It turns out she's as nocturnal as I am, and we nattered happily away about books, movies, anything that came to mind, for nine hours. *is boggled* By then the florists had come in to open up the shop so I made my farewells and trotted back next door to knock on my own front door.
Tommy answered, realised the security catch had been put on the door and started apologising. Then Jan started apologising and so did Brenda. Apparently Tommy had gone ahead to prepare a church for a wedding today and he'd left the ladies strict instructions to 'lock everything up', and Jan had automatically flipped the catch on the shop 'back door', forgetting it was also the front door for the two residences upstairs.
I have no idea where John spent the night. I enjoyed my impromptu night out but damn, I missed you guys.
Now I'm at skip=100 with drabbles to write sometime in the next five hours and at least a week's worth of fb to reply to that is probably going to have to wait until after my
fall_for_sx Halloween posting because I haven't actually written anything yet! Thank you, everyone who has commented on anything and not had a reply yet. I will get to you eventually, I promise. ;) 