One of those nights...

    I had a strange woman sleeping in my bungalow last night..

    One in the morning, I was just about to turn off the computer and go to bed.  A gentle but persistent tapping at the door spoiled that plan.

    I hit the outside light and recognised the shape and the little voice,  opened the door and there was the big old lady from just down the road, the one who drops in about once week for a cup of tea.

    Shivering and hardly dressed for outdoors,  She'd been out at the social club, with a taxi booked to take her  home, and hadn't bothered to dress for cold.

    Lots of apologising, but I told her to come in and made her a cup of tea to warm her up whilst she gave me her tale of woe.

    She couldn't get her keys to open the door.  She had two, but they were identical.

    I left her warming up, slipped on my very suspicious black 'Hoody' and went to try them myself.  They nearly went in, but not quite all the way.  After a bit of wriggling and jiggling I realised there was no way they were going to work.

    A quick scurry around with my torch showed there were no open windows to climb through this time.

    I went back, had a few swallows of my own drink, and then started calling 24/7 locksmiths.  All I got was answering machines.  After leaving four messages, and not getting a reply from any of them, I gave up.

    By this time it was nearly 3am.   She settled down in a chair, with her feet up on her walker, telling me she often slept like this. I found her a blanket, told her we'd get the door opened in the  morning, and went to bed.  The poor old thing was feeling guilty as hell about keeping me awake.

    It's a strange thing, but even when you know it's sincere, too many apologies start to grate after a while.

    It was a strange night.  I'm used to having the place completely to myself and was very much aware of there being someone else in my home.  Even though she was quiet the smell of her 'evening out' perfume was very noticeable, slowly permeating the entire building.

    By 7am I was wide wake again, and I lay there wondering just how time sensitive her 'fifteen pills every morning' were, and her insulin injection for her diabetes.

    Then because she's 86 and was so quiet the other side of the wall I started to wonder if she'd 'popped her clogs' during the night.

    I figured if she was already dead then another half an hour wouldn't matter and nodded off again for a while.  At 7-30 I was thinking that if she'd slipped into a diabetic coma time could be of the essence, so rolled out of bed and padded out into the hallway.

    She made some comment about me being as quiet as a cat but looked healthy enough so I made  a drink,  She apologised in advance for what the  neighbours might think if they saw her leaving my bungalow in the morning.

    After we had a laugh I went serious and asked about her morning pills and her jab.

    "They tell me I can miss a day without it killing me.  Not ideal, but not dangerous.  Even the injection".

    So I had my pills and breakfast, because routine is important in these things,  and fixed her up with some 'safe' painkillers because she'd missed her night time dose and was trying not to ouch and swear too loud.

    Then I phoned another locksmith, who promised to be there in 45 minutes.

    Turned out the keys she was using were for the back door and she had no idea where the front keys had gone.  A bit of confusion there.  She's a long way from totally gaga, but there's the occasional gap in her memory.

    The locksmith, a nice young chap, with a fascinating tool kit, offered to change the lock for her and give her a set of five new keys,  I had a quick skirt around, looking in the kind of places where people temporarily put down keys and forget to pick them up again, but to no avail.

    In the end she agreed to let him change the lock.

    Although I'd prefer not to have a key, in case she starts having stuff stolen again, I asked if she'd be happy to let me keep one of the spares hanging on a hook in my kitchen, just in case.  Clearly marked up with her name, and I hope I'll never have to use it.

    Hey ho...  Sunday is supposed to be a day of  rest, and I think I will conform to this for a few hours ;-)

    Gyppo

    PS:  Apparently I don't snore.  "I didn't know a man could be that quiet."

That was quite a night, Gyppo. And I had to completely change my visualization when you dropped that "she's 86" bombshell. She went from a curvy and scantily clad party girl, to a scantily clad little old lady with a walker.

And "I figured if she already dead then another half an hour wouldn't matter" will likely be the funniest thing I read today.

Thanks for starting my day off with a good tale, and happy napping to you.

It's odd that I think of her as a 'little' old lady, because she's a strapping and potentially formidable big old lady.  Her voice is small, and that always comes as an oddity when I first hear her speak.

Gyppo

Did you not try the keys in the back door? That's the first thing I was thinking might work. But maybe at 3 AM, it's hard to get to the back door without being arrested or something.

You are a knight in shining armor or rusted and dented armor or something along those lines.

Dick slept in really late this morning and I thought that maybe that huge roast I had put in the Crockpot was going to be feeding family that came to help get him to a funeral home. But he woke up eventually.

It's quite something when you get to our age and still find yourself "looking out for the old people"!

Jo:  Your own upbringing kicks in at times like this.

I tend to actively but quietly resist being sucked into 'the community', but an individual in trouble is an entirely different issue.

As for why this ended up in wordplay rather than the bar, I think I'll blame left-over adrenaline still kicking around in my brain ;-)