What a way to start the week

Stuck in a lift. With two small children. With a third due back home and me not there. And a chicken simmering on the hob. Oh yes, and one of the small children needing to pee.

The Infant School has an outside lift for wheelchair access. (It is so out of the way and round the bend and at the end of a very twisty path that I don't know quite how wheelchairs are supposed to get there at all. But once they do, There Is A Lift.) It's a platform secured in a steel case, and works by keeping the button pressed. Quite hard work for a small child. Not to mention boring. But rather than using the flight of six steps to leave the school premises, over the last couple of weeks we, at the request of Beri, have taken to using this lift. And yesterday . . .

We called the lift, got in, held the Down button, and waited for the 'click' of the releasing door. In vain. The Up button worked fine, but once more, no 'click'. Down again, and up, and panic was definitely setting in. Did I mention that this lift was a tiny bit out-of-the-way? And that the playgound was now fairly empty? And that Beri was now introducing his bladder as a legitimate topic of conversation? It was beginning to look like the plot of an early Stephen King novel. Think 'Cujo' without the dog. Think 'Christine' without the car. Better yet, think 'Panic Room' with me as Jodie Foster. Oh c'mon! You are just not trying hard enough!

But I digress.

Luckily Vash (who has the most beautiful twin girls in Beri's class) passed, and after she had stopped laughing, went off to the school office, and we were deluged by giggling women, pointing out that there were no keys in the lift lock (thanks) that we may have to call the school handyman who had gone home (thanks again) and that the emergency key didn't look like it actually fitted the lock (thanks once more).

Of course the key eventually fitted, we effected egress and scuttled off, without even a proper (if somewhat ironic) thank-you because of the chicken and the third child. Did I mention one of the giggling women was the headmistress? That poor boy is doomed. Doomed I tell you. Forever, Mrs Peal will identify him as the boy with the mother who broke the lift.

UPDATE. My friend Marie, who taught for many many many years, (and was very recently awarded her PhD, hooray!) reckons that if Mrs Peal ever reads this, she might well feel that I am calling into question her professional detachment, and that OF COURSE her opinion of my younger son will be based solely on his performance and deportment at school, and not on spurious consideration of his inept family, and that she will be offended at the implication that she is swayed by such minor concerns. I'd like to take this opportunity to say NO-OOOO-O-OO-O! Mrs Peal's professional detachment is everything it should be, please like him, please, and anyway he takes far more after his father than me, in fact my parenthood of him has been called into question (not only be me) so that's all right then.

Isn't it?