Home Alone: A story of survival

There are many things that I believe most of us would dread to have trapped in our house: A swarm of locusts. A rabid puma. A diarrhoea-stricken elephant. Russell Brand.

But out of all these things, surely an angry Northern Irishman would also feature high up on the list.

It all started in January when my landlord (from Derry, living in Dubai) had said that his brother would be coming over to stay at the flat at some stage. No worries, says I; su casa es...well, su casa. I then forgot about it all until noon last Saturday when I received a voicemail from the landlord’s brother Kev, saying he was heading over to London to move all his stuff into the flat. I waited till the end of the voicemail to hear his arrival date, when it turned out it was that very day- 4pm.

Well, the weekend was already in motion, but I was happy to stick around that afternoon to let him in; I had nothing else on really, except watching the Irish make Bolognese outta the Italians in the rugby. Molto bene.

So 4pm came, Kev arrived, and we moved all his stuff in. He’s dead sound, we have a cup of tea and chat about life and shizzle. Then 7pm rolls around and I realise that I’m running late for a mate’s leaving drinks in Islington, and herein lies our conundrum: two of us- but only one door key.

No worries, he says; he’s knackered from the driving and he’ll probably just crash early. If he needs food, he reckons he’ll just order a pizza in. So that seems to solve the problem. So I throw on my drinking clothes and vamoose. Unfortunately....I may have, without thinking, er...locked the front door behind me as I left. Either that, or the door is self locking. Personally, I’m gonna go with the latter explanation.

So I head into town, and am working on my second pint of Guinness when I get a call from Kev.

“Em...Conor?”
‘Kev- what’s the craic?’
“Aye...em, the front door’s locked.”
‘Oh, okay...well can’t you just open it?’
“Aye but..it’s locked from the inside.”
‘Ooooooh,’ I say, beginning to realise the problem: the poor bastard’s locked in the flat.
“Aye,” says Kev. “The wee pizza boy’s outside the front door now and I can’t let him in.”
‘Oh shite,’ says I, helpfully. ‘Em....I don’t know what to say man....sorry?’
“Ah well...” says Kev resignedly. “No bother...I’ll work something out. Just feckin’ hungry is all.”

I then heard him telling the pizza boy, in no certain terms, that he had got the wrong house, and to therefore feck off.

In retrospect, the only thing Kev probably could have done in that situation was to get the pizza boy to slide the pizza in through the letterbox, slice by slice, and then reassemble it on the other side himself. I was about to text this suggestion to him seconds later, but thought the better of it.

Kev later told me that, after the pizza disappointment, he went to the back door to see if the backgarden could offer him any freedom from this accidental house arrest. However, there are two things you should know about the flat. Firstly, it is situated a few doors down the road from a police station, and therefore nocturnal prowling around the neighbours’ backgardens is highly inadvisable. Secondly, the flat is a maisonette- i.e. a house whereby the upstairs and downstairs have been divided into separate dwellings. As a result, the downstairs back-room window of the family living underneath us, faces directly onto our backgarden. What this basically means is that the only thing Kev achieved by tapping on the back-room window in his quest for liberation, was to scare the bejesus out of the six year old boy who lives downstairs. The kid was so alarmed on seeing Kev’s partially-illuminated-by-moonlight, shaven head staring in at him, and tapping the window, that he ran off crying for his mother.

Sure who wouldn’t?

Meanwhile I continued on my night out, had a few more pints, until the point when somebody asked: “are you staying for another?” Then I remembered there was some bloke half-starving in my flat, and in true Home-Alone style, slapped a hand to my face in realisation and exclaimed ‘KEVIN!’ I then downed my last pint and rushed for the last tube.

It turned out that Kev, as previously advised, had crashed early and was asleep by the time I got home. The next morning I sheepishly emerged from my room, hungover and apologetic. Kev had packed his overnight bag and was getting ready to head back to Derry, via scenic London on the way.

‘Er...sorry about last night Kev,’ I said.

“No worries man,” he replied, waving away the apology with a smile. “Shit happens.”

And like that, all was forgiven. Fair play.

“I have to say though,” he added, scratching his head, and wearing a grave expression. “I don’t think I would’ve made it through the night if it wasn’t for those Snack-A-Jacks o’ yours.”

He then grabbed his bag, shook my hand and headed for the front door, before pausing.

“Oh aye,” he said, turning around. “And your beef noodles got it too.”

Trust me: you’ve never heard anything quite as sinister as a Northern Irishman confessing to having basically assassinated the paltry contents of your food cupboard.

PS Kev- you're right, I do owe you royalties on this one..