One of those days...

I *really* had one of *those* days yesterday. We’ll all have them – where anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But actually I was remarkably cheerful for most of it.

I got up yesterday morning and packed up lots of stuff to move. I then unlocked the back door and put it on a hook to keep it open and went in and out loading various things into the car. I had a couple more boxes to go in the car and had taken the door of the hook and the door slammed shut behind me. “That’s fine” I thought but then remembered the door has a Yale lock. My brain quickly ticked on and I thought “No, it’s fine, I’ve got the front door key in my pocket.” So I took the front door key out of my pocket walked round to the front of the house and unlocked the door. “Great” I thought, except as I opened the door, I realised that I hadn’t taken the security chain off and so couldn’t open it more than a few inches. I stood there trying to think of what to do but decided that it was best to drop all my stuff off to my new place and then that would give me time to work out how to get back in. Fortunately I am someone who tends to keep keys in their pocket – so that I don’t ever get locked out. Normally it works so well… Anyway it meant I had my car key and the key to my new place, despite having no money, phone, coat and so on.

I dropped the stuff off and then came back to try and work out how to get in. I didn’t have any success with anything I tried and then I went and spoke to a neighbour and he gave me the key he had in case it was for the back door, but it was also for the front door. So I decided all I could do was go over to my parents’ and find a locksmith and have something to eat. However, I couldn’t call out a locksmith until much later because I had to wait for my appliances to be delivered. My dad gave me some money in case there was anything I urgently needed to buy and I went to wait for the appliances to be delivered. And waited. And waited. And waited.

In the end I phoned to see if they were going to deliver the appliances and they called me back and said they were stuck somewhere and wouldn’t make it in time. I said that was fine and rearranged it for this afternoon. I then phoned the locksmith and he turned up about half an hour later and got out some bolt cutters, cut through the security chain and let me in (incidentally he didn’t ask for any proof that I lived there). He then fitted a new chain and charged me just over £80 for the privilege (in all honesty I think that was quite cheap and was just grateful to get back in as the TV, lights and heating had been on all day by this point. What would my landlady say?!). I didn’t get any of the things done that I had planned to. While I was waiting for the appliances to be delivered I was going to sort out things like insurance but as my laptop and credit card were also locked in the house, I couldn’t.

But by this point something had happened that put my slight troubles into perspective. My description of this will go no way to really convey what happened… Oh my… All I had in terms of entertainment at my new place was a radio, so I was listening to LBC (which is a London talk radio station) and at 3pm Iain Lee came on and he had an expert guest Steven Murdoch who was there to provide advice on IT and gadgets. I think you can actually get a podcast of the programme but I’m not sure I’d recommend that you listen! People phoned in and the programme was a bit odd anyway because Steven didn’t really seem to be able to provide much advice and any caller that Iain seemed to take a dislike to (which seemed to be most of them) he cut off. Anyway, they then announced that after the ad break they had something important to tell all computer users so people should stay tuned. Apparently when the year changes from 2006 to 2007 there is a high chance that there will be problems like those predicted for the millennium. Steven Murdoch said that if you are using the internet on New Year’s Eve that your computer might suddenly stop working. Iain made some quip about how only people with no life would be using the internet on New Year’s Eve - and it went down hill from there…

Steven replied that last year he spent New Year on his own because he had just split up with his girlfriend, so it wasn’t just people with no life who spent New Year on their own and sometimes people are just going through a tough time. Things then moved on and they took some more calls – and suddenly Steven started to cry live on air… Iain tried to get him to stop crying and then Steven started sobbing. They tried to get back on track but had to cut to a really long jingle so that he had time to recover. Except… they didn’t turn the microphones off and so what Steven thought was a private conversation about how his girlfriend had walked out on him was being broadcast to anyone in London who happened to have tuned in. You then heard Iain shouting “The red light is on. I told you to turn the microphones off!” and the sound was finally cut.

When the jingle came to an end the next caller then came on air and said how sorry he was that Steven was going through such a bad time but he could relate as he had just split up with his wife. Steven then gave a shocked reply that he hadn’t realised what he had said was being broadcast. For the last few minutes of the programme it was just a disaster and as hard as he tried to answer the questions, he just couldn’t concentrate and kept breaking down. Iain kept telling him he had to pull himself together, but the poor chap was in such a state that he just couldn’t. This was real car crash listening. What made it worse was that Iain realised that Steven was going to be on his own for New Year this year and so to try and pull the situation back a bit he said that he was going to his sister’s for New Year and so could ask her if Steven could go along as well. Steven jumped at this and sounded so desperate and said that although he would be in Scotland he’d make sure that he got back for it if he was allowed to go along.

By the end of the programme people must have just been willing it to end. You couldn’t help but feel really sorry for him. He was probably miserable enough as it was and breaking down on air must have made it so much worse for him.

I think we can safely say that however irritating my day was, in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t such a bad day after all because at least I didn't accidentally broadcast my woes to the whole of London. Every cloud...