Ups and Downs

We had a power cut. This happens quite frequently on our sub-tropical island, and when it does, the outage can last for hours. And when the power does come back on, it often gets cut again, comes back on, cuts again, and continues like that for an hour or so.

This particular power cut happened quite late in the afternoon. I was alone at the time because my girlfriend had popped out for a first visit to a new hairdressing shop that had opened just across the road.

I hate being alone. Being alone always gets me thinking, and as my girlfriend says, that’s not always a good thing.

My bright idea this time was to plan ahead. I decided to go downstairs, crank open the electric car park gates, drive the car out, and park it in the street. That way, when my girlfriend returned, we’d be able to drive off together for our evening out without any further hassle.

We live at the top of a multi-storey building. Of course the lifts were out of action because of the power cut, so I strode merrily down umpteen flights of stairs.

When I arrived at ground floor level, I realised I had left the car key upstairs. So I trotted back up the umpteen flights of stairs.

When I got back to the top, I discovered I’d also forgotten my door keys. They were inside the apartment and I couldn’t get in. But I remembered the receptionist in the ground floor foyer held a spare set of keys. So I stomped back down the umpteen flights of stairs.

The receptionist was there in the foyer, and gave me the spare set of keys. I walked back up the umpteen flights of stairs.

When I got to my front door the keys didn’t fit. That’s when I remembered I had recently changed the locks and had forgotten to give copies of the new keys to the receptionist. But all was not lost. I decided to go back down and pop across the road and borrow my girlfriend’s keys. So I staggered back down the umpteen flights of stairs.

When I arrived back downstairs, the receptionist told me she had just seen my girlfriend return home and take the other flight of stairs up. So I gasped my way back up the umpteen flights of stairs.

I rang the doorbell. My girlfriend was chatting on her mobile phone when she let me in. I didn’t have the heart or lungs to interrupt her conversation, so I got my keys and tottered back down the umpteen flights of stairs.

There was no sign of the car in the car park. It had vanished. So I limped back up the umpteen flights of stairs to announce that the car had been stolen.

My girlfriend found that funny. You see, when she’d left for the hairdressers, she’d decided to take the car so that she could do a bit of shopping. And when she‘d returned, the electric car park gates hadn’t opened because of the power cut. So she had parked the car in the street outside.

And she grinned at me and said “Oh – that reminds me! Would you nip down and bring the shopping up?”

:-(