The Prisoner

"If ever you are going to be trapped in a tiny room for hours on end, then the downstairs toilet would be the best room for it to happen in.  Unlike, say, a lift, a sauna, or a cupboard, our downstairs toilet has running water, somewhere to sit down, and most importantly, it has a toilet.  It also has a small window that you could open for fresh air, or possibly even call for help from - or at least it would have had such a thing if we had not locked it in order to stop Jamie from throwing the toilet rolls out of it."

This, she told me later, was what Meg was thinking when, as you have probably guessed, Jamie trapped her in the downstairs toilet.  She had popped in for a few seconds to powder her nose, when the door closed behind her, and she heard a loud crash from outside.  Jamie had pulled the radiator off the wall, and it had fallen in front of the toilet door.

I imagine that many of you reading this have never seen a radiator that has been pulled from a wall.  I had not, until recently.  I would have thought that the act of pulling it from the wall would also have broken the pipes attached to it, leading to water gushing everywhere and a massive plumber's bill, but no.  Somehow, the pipes at the bottom of the radiator remained intact, and the whole thing swiveled away from the wall and landed in front of the toilet door.  Being a heavy radiator, and still being attached to the wall via the pipes, it would not move at all, and the door could not be opened more than a centimetre or two.  Perhaps it would have been possible to force the door open, but that would certainly have broken the pipes, and probably the door too.

So Meg was trapped.

Jamie, on the other hand, had the freedom of the house. He finally had the freedom to do whatever he wanted. He could eat all the chocolate in the sweet drawer, shred every piece of paper in the office, microwave the guinea pigs .... or he could just hunt around for where Meg had hidden the house keys, unlock the door, and go exploring around the neighbourhood.

How long would Meg be trapped for?  Well, I work in an office 30 minutes drive away, so if she could have called me at work, I could have been home in half an hour.  However, her mobile phone was on the kitchen windowsill, not in her pocket.  My working day was 9am to 5pm.  Unfortunatley it was only 10:15am, so it was over 7 hours before I would due to return.  Fortunately though, it was actually a Saturday, and I was not at work at all, I was upstairs, wondering what the crash was.  When I heard "Steve!  I'm trapped in the toilet!" shouted a few seconds later, I thought I had better go and investigate.