As One Door Closes...

Blood was 5.4 this morning, and the weigh-in wasn't so much a bell tolling as a triangle tinkling. The headline, really, depends on your outlook. The headline is either "Sonofabitch, put on 2.5 pounds!"...or it's "Yay, only put on 2.5 pounds!"

15 stone 8 this morning. So like I say, the headline is all in how you look at it. Me, right now, I'm looking at it in a sunny manner, so it can bite me. Wednesday tomorrow, with all its exercisey potential.

The big news today though is about our blue front door...

A little background. One of the movies d and I had in common before we met was Notting Hill. When we met, it had extra significane - bumbling Brit bloke gets together with classy American, aeons out of his league - although of course, I did point out that, apart from the fact he was skinny as a hairy rake, I had more in common with Spike, the 'masturbating Welshman' who was waiting at home for Hugh Grant's character. Still, she seemed to still want to know me, so, as I had to change flats, I found a place in Stratford with a blue front door - if you haven't seen the movie, a) are you serious? Stop reading this drivel, go and watch it now, and b) Hugh Grant waxes lyrical about his house in Notting Hill in the movie - the house with the blue front door.

And while Notting Hill was more a place to not go to recipe book shops, to eat in and spend pleasant nights in bookstores than to ever dream of affording to live in, we played out our own transatlantic love story behind our own blue front door.

Sinc emoving here, we've had a white door, punctured with windows. But for some reason or other, the company that manages the flats we're in has put out a decree, claiming that all the flats here need a new door. So today, they came and put one on for us - and because d got to choose, we are now the proud owners of another blue front door.

Thing is...it's a little complicated, as front doors go.
We went out for a stroll and dinner, managing to lock the door after us. Then, coming back, we walked up to our balcony following our next door neighbour.

We haven't particularly got on with this neighbour since our arrival, and there's no love lost between us. We reached the door, and d slid in her key. turned it, as the instructions had told us to do. Pulled down on the handle. Tried to the turn the key again - it wouldn't budge. She turned the key back, raised the handle, turned again. Nothing.
"Goddamnedsonofabitchin'bastard..." muttered d. It's kind of her trademark curse.
It was enough.
From seemingly nowhere, a sticky young urchin appeared, sucking on a lolly and with grubby, play-encrusted hands.
"Wossamarrer?" he demanded. "You locked out?" He stared at us with a frank, intense manner.
"Yes," we said, compelled by the silence, which this young Torquemada weilded like a club.
He shoved us aside, turned the key, jiggled the handle, turned the key again.
"You're completely locked out," he diagnosed - though without entirely revealing whether we'd always been in this predicament, or whether his certainty sprang from his knowledge of what he himself had just sticky-fingeredly done to us. There are gangs in the city that will clamp your car illegally until you pay them to remove the efforts of their own handiwork. I eyed him suspiciously.
"Ohhhhhhh!" he called over the balcony to an Urchin, Second-Class. "Come up and help these people!" he yelled, adding, with a certain deadly, uncompromising accuracy, "who've locked 'emselves out of their flat!!!"
Deputy Urchin came up, turned the key, jiggled the handle, wiped his extra sticky hand on the doorframe.
"'s'locked," he pronounced, revealing why he was just Deptury Urchin. Chief Urchin, meanwhile, was eyeing our kitchen window meaningfully. Since it'd been hot all day, we'd left it open. He sniffed.
"Could open it from inside," he judged. "He can fit through this gap," he said, pointing at his Deputy.
"Noooo," said d. "He really can't."
"Get the girl," said Deputy Urchin.
This was quite a production we we at the centre of by now. There was going to be The Girl.

There was a girl. She was the daughter of the neighbour next door. She breezed through, turned, twiddled, pulled, then dropped her arms.
"Oh," she said. "Usually works. I can open mine like that every time."
"Thanks for trying," we mumbled. Now our little stretch of balcony held me, d, Chief and Deputy Urchins, and The Girl.
"Call your mom," said d.
"What can she do?" I asked. "She hasn't got a key."
"No, I mean like 'We're coming up, might have to stay the night...'"
"Ah."
"Tha's an idea," said The Girl, disappearing into her flat. The Urchins frowned and buggered off. Clearly, we were losing our appeal as a spectacle.
The Woman came out - The neighbour we'd followed up the stairs.
"Locked, eh?" she asked, redundantly.
"New door," I mumbled.
"Bastards, ain't they?" she mumbled right back, taking the key in her hand like some sort of soothsaying harridan. She twiddled, turned, pushed, turned some more, shoved her shoulder up against the door...

And let us in. At that moment, my pocket erupted. I was getting a phone call. It's probably worth mentioning at this point that my ringtone is the Doctor Who theme from 1980. There were...erm...Looks.
"Thanks!" we said, stumbling into our place.
It's entirely possible that when I leave for the gym tomorrow morning (cos I can!), and d goes to work, that neither of us will be able to get back in under our own steam. So...Hell, I may have to live at the gym tomorrow. Cos clearly, as one door closes...well, that's about all that really happens.
 But for now, here we are, back behind our blue front door, like Notting Hillers.
"Oh," said d, when I mentioned this. "Yeah, that too."
I looked at her.
"What do you mean, that too?" I asked. "What...erm...else?"
"Oh, I chose it cos it was Tardis blue, baby. Tardis blue for you..."

Did I mention that me American was aeons out of my league?

Turns out we're as sentimental as each other, just occasionally in surprising directions. How can I be worried about a couple of extra pounds on a Tardis-blue day? Could you?