We had an emergency locksmith callout to a man locked out of his house in Richmond this week. His tale of woe has to be one of the funniest we’ve had to date so I felt to share it.
I arrived at about 9.30pm on a Friday evening at a Richmond house to find our new customer sitting on his front porch. His pants were badly ripped,he had a black eye and it seemed his nose had been bleeding. Sitting beside him was a rather mangled bouquet of flowers. I went through the normal procedure of determining who he was and ensuring this was indeed his home and then he told me what happened.
He had been in a long term, long distance friendship with a girl he had met on a holiday when travelling to Australia two decades previously. They had kept in touch for almost 20 years as penpals and then via emails until one day they decided to turn their distance romance into a real romance and he flew back to Australia so they could be together. Today marked the 20th anniversary of their first meeting.
A romantic dinner had been planned for that evening(his new /old love was working whilst he was at home for the day) but things started to go bad when a mate popped over and suggested a quick beer. Looking at his watch, 6 hrs till dinner, he accepted but a quick beer, soon turned into a quick game of pool, and a few more quick beers and then some long stories… and then he noticed the lengthening shadows outside. A quick glance at his phone told him dinner, 12 blocks away on Doncaster Rd was in 20 minutes.
He had no present organised, no flowers, he was pretty damn drunk, not dressed to impress and a bit on the nose. Wallet was empty even if there was time to buy flowers. A quick scrub up in the bathroom was all he had time to organise then he made the fateful decision to run to the restaurant taking a detour through Boroondara cemetery to pinch some flowers. At least.. he would turn up with flowers.
Execution of the drunken cemetery flower heist did not go entirely to plan however. He was spotted pinching the flowers, made a run for it, had to scale a fence, got his pants caught on the fence badly ripping them, landed face first on the other side almost breaking his nose and giving himself a black eye… He bounced up and ran off thinking perhaps it was still a salvageable evening, he could make up some tripping over story…. He made it to the restaurant only 20 minutes late, sat down bleeding, handed over the very squashed bouquet of flowers which still had the card mentioning the recently deceased person on it. It seems the recently deceased had the same name as his rather attractive next door neighbor so all hell broke loose as his beloved accused him of having a drunken affair with the neighbor mixing up the flowers and getting beaten up by the neighbors husband… so he came clean and admitted what had happened.
Suffice to say…. he got little sympathy, certainly no love that night… and his chosen one took herself out for the night as he skulked home to find the ripped pants included a ripped pocket and his keys had fallen out and were now lost. Phone calls to his lady love to come home and let him in, were going straight to message bank so he called Toplock. We were at his home in Richmond within 15 minutes.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone looking quite so glum. I had his house unlocked in 2 minutes, and after proving he was the resident he flopped face down on the couch and I left him to it.
A word of advice? If a mate comes around for a quick beer when you have a big event happening later on?
Just say no.
