Despite my best efforts to be a mature and responsible grown-up, there is one aspect (probably more than one, but humour me) of an organised adult life that persistently eludes me: managing to have my keys in my possession at all required times.
Arriving gratefully at your beloved home, only to realise that you have no way of getting into it, has to be near the top of the 'most frustrating experiences in life' list. Suddenly the most basic, taken for granted thing becomes unachievable and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except stand there seething with disbelief, watching your plans for the next bit of time dribble away into nothing. Plus you have no-one but yourself to blame! At the very best it's extremely annoying. In the last three months, for example, I have had to wait for hours in the park with my weekly shop for a flatmate to return from a day trip, had to go round to a friends house to frantically email the same flatmate to let me in because I had left both my keys and my phone at home, and then today - I went out with my new flatmates to get some farmers' market food, headed sensibly home early to get some Sunday tasks done and was rewarded for my diligence with the sight of my locked front door and an empty pocket. In the meantime they had gone on to a faraway pub, meaning I had to walk miles back on myself to borrow keys from them, in rather uncomfortable boots, weeping metaphorical tears of rage and stupidity.
But the out-and-out worst case of this imbecility has to be the time I was house-sitting in Taiwan. Part of the deal was looking after these two tiny, overexcited dogs with very small bladders who had to be carried up and down many flights of stairs three times a day so they could pee/run manically around outside. It was very humidly hot and I was very not good at getting up early enough to do the first walk of the day. About the fourth day in, I stumbled blearily out of bed, trying to avoid tripping over the tiny yappers whilst grabbing leads, poo bags etc. and, you guessed it, locked myself out with no phone, passport, money or keys. I didn't know anyone in Taiwan.
I massively freaked out and essentially took on the behaviour of the frantic little dogs, running manically up and down the stairs sweating profusely and making tiny yelping noises. After a bit I calmed down enough to knock on all the other apartment doors, but no-one was home except a teenage girl getting ready for school who was clearly nearly as freaked out as me by my stuttering Mandarin. I think I basically said 'Neighbour. No key. Please help!!!!' At first she actually replied 'I can't help you, sorry' and closed the door in my face, resulting in me sitting down in the horrible dirty concrete doorway and being maybe a little more hysterical than I would like anyone to ever witness.
Anyway, the long and short of it was that most Taiwanese residential complexes have a security guard who sits in a little guard box near the front entrance and in the end the girl got our one to come and confirm that he had indeed seen me around walking the dogs, and sort out a locksmith to come and open the door. He was very nice and after that we waved and said hello to each other every time the tiny dogs dragged me past. THANK GOD FOR TAIWANESE COMMUNITY-NESS.
But really, you'd think I would have learned my lesson after that wouldn't you? Apparently not though. Pffff.
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