I was on child minding duty today. We had a good morning with a trip to the swimming pool where both children had a great time. It’s the pool where Emma has her lessons and she certainly seemed at home paddling up and down with a froggy float (it was fun time) and jumping in from the side (although still trying to ensure her head stayed above water). This afternoon we headed in to Southampton for a bit of shopping. I can’t claim it was all that successful. We spent the first half an hour waiting to pick up my wedding ring (now without a break in it and also looking very shiny once again). Duncan and Emma had their feet measured – still 6F and a marginally larger 10.5G so no new shoes.
We did manage a few purchases before heading back to the car. A decided we should pick up an IKEA catalogue on the way which required us to descend to the first floor in the lift. I mistakenly still pressed button two – the floor for our car. We let the floor pass… and then the lift ground to a halt with the doors open adjacent to a blank wall!
The buttons no longer responded so we hit the alarm. There was a series of modem like noises from the speaker and then nothing. We tried again. More noises. I had no mobile reception but one of the other people in the lift did and she phoned her Mum who phoned the number under the CCTV. After leaning on the alarm button for a couple of minutes we also eventually raised someone on the intercom who dispatched assistance. It turns out that they had been ignoring the alarm up until then – apparently people are always setting it off. So, the moral of the story is that it pays to be persistent. Mysteriously, when they finally prised the other set of doors it turned out that we were on the 10th floor! Somehow the lift must have taken us to 10 instead of 1 and consequently opened the doors on the wrong side before shutting itself down.