Darling Alex

This is a picture of our darling little 2 1/2 yr old.

Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth with that beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes picture, but let me tell you a little story that will change all of that...!

Imagine 8am on a Sunday morning if you will, just got up wandering around in your pyjamas sorting out breakfast, planning the day ahead, actually going out at 9am.

Suddenly there is a voice from the lounge, Ben is telling Alex to open the door, constantly saying "I can't get it open"

On investigation I find Ben trying to open our bedroom door, and when I give it a try I realise that the door is locked!

Now small problem here is that there is a push button on the door handle on the bed side of the door and a key slot on the lounge side of the door.

Alex has pushed the button, come out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him!!!!!

So there you have it, Steve and I are stood in pyjamas and nothing else, all our clothes are in the bedroom that is now unaccessable, all the windows into the bedroom are closed and have safety locks and catches on anyway.

Steve makes the wonderful comment on the fact that for once I have put all the laundry away in it's correct place so not a laundry basket in sight with any of our clothes in it.

Well we had guests for a BBQ last night, so I cleared up.

And there you have it, 8.15 on Sunday morning and we have to start thinking about how to open a locked door in our rental house, without doing too much damage to the door or Alex.

So we call the landlady, who, if she had answered the phone at that time of the morning, would have loved us and leave a rather urgent message for her to get back to us asap?

Then we sit and think for a while, I suggest a locksmith and we ponder the amount of money this is going to cost us!

But we would be ok for a little while, I mean ok we aren't going out at this point but eventually Steve will require his insulin, although there is plenty in the fridge and I think there is a syringe on the unit in the dining room, so not totally stuck.

Anyway, eventually Steve says call a locksmith because at this time on a Sunday morning it could take a while, so I wave my finger over the page and see where it lands and call that one.

I got a lovely guy called Nick on the phonefrom Piako Mobile Locksmith, who guessed he was having a better morning than we were. He proceeded to explain that he could come and visit but it would cost us basic of $130 to start or he could talk us through how to break the lock with an electric drill and a screwdriver and then we could all stay in our houses and it would only cost us $35 from the local hardware store later in the week to get a new lock.

So I passed him over to Steve and he had the quick 101 on how to break the lock on the door, nicely, without too much damage.

Breakfast complete, out came the drill and in went Steve, who succeeded in nicely and cleanly breaking the lock and with a screwdriver gained access to the bedroom.

Nice thing about it all is that it has been broken in such a way that we can still lock the door from the bedroom side but gain access with the screwdriver from the lounge side if it ever happens again.

You can just see the drill hole in the 2 O'clock position on the lock, so nicely done.

So we have told the landlady that yes we will replace the lock before we leave, but for now for safety sake with Alex we will leave as is, because at least we know we can get to our stuff next time.