Okay, here’s the deal - henry and I were just lamenting the fact that we haven’t got anything good to blog about, so he suggested we give one another a topic. I foolishly agreed, and was given something stupid about horses. In return, inspired by a great anecdote I’ve been saving up about the time I locked myself out of the house, I suggested that he write about an occasion on which he’s locked himself out of the house. Having rejected his crazy horse idea, I realised that I was no longer able to tell my great anecdote about the time I locked myself out of the house, because henry was doing that now and it would look like I was copying him. Then I had the cunning idea of doing it anyway, so here it is.

I was sitting at home one Tuesday evening with a pile of CDs I’d borrowed from Ilford library, and it occurred to me that the evening could be fruitfully spent in returning them. So I left the house, locked the door, walked to the car… then realised I’d left the CDs inside. So I went back to the house, opened the door, put the keys down on the table, picked up the CDs, went outside, closed the door, and said “Oh dear I forgot my keys.”

It wasn’t a catastrophe. This was in the days when my old pal Colin lived here too, so I just had to pass the time until he got home. Obviously returning the CDs was out of the question - without my keys I couldn’t drive to Ilford - so I posted them through my letterbox to save myself from carrying them around needlessly all night. I then phoned Colin on my mobile to establish when he’d be home.

As I had feared, he was working late, so I had four or five hours to kill. We’d just established this when my phone terminated the conversation because I’d run out of air time. This was unfortunate, because whatever I did with my evening, it would be necessary to keep in contact with Colin so I knew when I could come home. But I’d worry about that later - first I had to decide what to do.

I decided to get a bus into Ilford, where I could go to the library, take a good book from the shelf, and have a pleasant time reading it. Possibly a bit of Sherlock Holmes. Having constructed this plan, I realised that I’d acted a bit rashly when I shoved the CDs through my letterbox. But it was too late to do anything about that now, so I got on a bus, went into Ilford, and approached the library.

I know what you’re all thinking. “Ilford’s in the Borough of Redbridge,” you’re thinking, “and all libraries within that borough are closed on Tuesday evening.” You are, of course, quite right, and on realising this I was doubly annoyed because a) had I realised that in the first place I wouldn’t be in this mess, and b) I was now standing in the middle of Ilford with nothing to do for the next four hours.

There’s not much to do in Ilford at the best of times, and it was starting to get late so most places were shut. About the only forms of entertainment open to me were Tesco and McDonald’s. I decided to make the best of a bad situation - I would go to Tesco, buy a book, then go and sit in McDonald’s and read it.

En route to Tesco I attempted to top up the air time on my phone. It was dark now, and raining quite heavily, and there was a howling wind, so I popped into the public toilet for some peace and quiet while I made the call. As I stood in front of the urinals minding my own business, someone came in and started shouting at me. I thought at first it was a drunk, but it turned out to be the person responsible for locking the toilets at night, and he was suggesting that I get out before he do it. This seemed like good advice, so out I trotted, and replenished my air time on the street corner as the rain lashed down and the wind tried to blow me into the road. I then tramped soggily to Tesco to see what books they had in stock.

There was only one I had any interest in reading - Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett. I hadn’t read this yet, but I did own a copy, and was somewhat reluctant to buy a second. But there wasn’t anything else any good, so I did.

And so I spent the rest of the evening on a hard plastic seat in the Ilford branch of McDonald’s, reading a brand new copy of a book I already owned, wondering all the time if anyone had noticed it had taken me three hours to drink my Coke.

That’s about the end of the story, and henry’s blog doesn’t seem to be up yet, so if I post this quick I can get in first and it will look like he copied me instead of the other way round.