Irritated

A cleaner flicked a switch they shouldn’t have and I ended up locked out of my house. Thankfully the cleaner texted me to give me forewarning.

I was wearing my yoga kit and a thin mac when I got home to deal with it. It was cold and dark. Pretty stressful and annoying.

I had to call MrH who is in Ireland at the moment. He used his computer to remotely turn up the outside lighting to I could partly see what I was doing (why it’s set to dim I do not know!) I had to use a V9 lithium battery he’d given me to keep in my car for such an emergency. I had to place the battery on the electronic keypad contacts and wait. The cleaner had flattened the battery by trying to unsuccessfully get back in the house. If I moved slightly and lost contact with the metal pads at the bottom of the device then it decided it had been tampered with! It then required me to hold the battery still on the contacts as it counted me down for 3 minutes before it would let my try a code. I lost count of the number of times it kept counting me down for 3 minutes, and the clock kept resetting itself. When it was ready to accept a code it gave me a split second window before it went dead and all the numbers were unresponsive.

After an hour of trying (that included a few periods of sitting in my car to get my body heat up/ my fingers working again). I decided to go to B and Q before it shut to get masking sellotape. I was going to tape a nearby window and break a tiny bit of unsellotaped glass so I could unlock the thing from inside!

MrH wanted me to smash a window or kick the door in but I was worried about injuring myself with the glass as it’s not safety glass. Before heading off I decided to give it one last try and thank goodness as I touched the battery to the connector MrH managed to remotely unlock the door. Give me a manual key and lock any day over these devices.