A couple of weeks ago, you may recall I bought a new bunk-bed for the spare room. As a result, I’ve moved the older sofa-bed that was in the room out onto my balcony. With all of the warm nights, and nothing to watch on television, I’ve found myself spending quite a few evenings, lately, on the balcony. Last night, however, I discovered one of the downsides of this new “outdoors lifestyle”.

It happened at about eleven o’clock last night when I was standing outside with my mobile phone in my left-hand. I’m still not exactly sure HOW it happened, but suddenly the phone slipped out of my hand. Maybe it was the full-moon, maybe there was a minor earthquake or maybe it was the glass of wine in my right-hand that put me off momentarily off-balance?

My instant concern was that it had hit the ground two stories below. So I ran downstairs and looked everywhere in the darkness, to no avail. So I rushed back upstairs and rang the phone and somewhere… somehow… somehwere… I could hear its distinctive ring. But WHERE was it? So I rang again and rushed out on the balcony. Looking down, I could see the flashing screen which indicated the phone had survived the fall, and was perched delicately on the ledge of the balcony downstairs.

Of course it was too late to knock on the door of the people who live there, so I grabbed my foot-stool, and ran downstairs with the goal of reaching up and retrieving the phone myself. Even with a foot-stool, it was still slightly too high for me, as I moved my hand along in the dark. Of course Murphy’s Law intervened, and rather than retrieving the phone, I ended up pushing the phone even further onto the balcony. Philosphically, I went to bed hoping I’d be able to locate the phone this morning.

At about six o’clock this morning I heard the distrinctive ring once again. It was the sound of alarm going off every nine minutes for close to an hour. Surely this would gain the attention of the neighbours, but it seems they had left the house already still without any idea my mobile phone was on their balcony. After knocking on their door a few times after seven, I decided to take things into my own hands and retrieve the phone myself.

Once again armed with the foot-stool and half a dozen copies of the Yellow Pages I wandered downstairs to retrieve the phone from the balcony without attracting too much attention. Outside the apartment block I was greeted by a tradesman who, of course, I explained the story too. I must have looked incredibly dodgy standing on a bunch of Yellow Pages volumes on top of foot-stool reaching over the balcony of the people downstairs. As I walked to work this morning I wondered how many people in my street had seen my efforts of early morning treapassing.

PS. And in case you’re wondering… that really is my hand and my phone, taken in my office at work against my lovely red walls. And if you’re also thiking I’m a lazy so and so since I only have two diary entries remaining for the day… a meeting at 1500 and then going to the pub at 1800… you’re sadly wrong.