Oops, Dammit!
If you were inadvertently placed in a potentially life-threatening situation by your own folly in somehow failing to ensure you were secure in surroundings well enough known to you, but which had suddenly taken on the aspect of a threat to your survival, you'd no doubt turn the air blue with all manner of oral blasphemies. Before yourself turning blue as a result of being helplessly incarcerated in an unheated convenience.And that, exactly, was the plight of a man in Aberdeen, Scotland. Imprisoned for four full days within the locked, inescapable confines of a rarely-winter-used public washroom located in a bowling club where he works, in Aberdeen, Scotland David Leggat must have done a lot of cursing. A 55-year-old teaching retiree, he would no doubt have been well familiar with the convenience.
He entered it, the door slammed shut behind him, and the handles simultaneously fell off. Oops. Bloody damn!
Thereafter, he spent 16 hours a day in darkness in that dank, frigid interior. His only sustenance throughout his ordeal being water from the taps which were, thankfully, still operational. "I did a survival course once and knew I had to keep my feet warm, so I kept running a basin of hot water and putting my feet in to send the heat through my body", he explained post-rescue.
Four days and no one missed him? Well, he is not married, lives alone, and no one seemed to realize there was anything amiss. Since the washroom is not heated it rarely sees use in the winter. Fortunately for Mr. Leggat, on day four a cleaner heard his appeals for help and went off for help. "The only thing I regret is not getting trapped behind the bar", said Mr. Leggat on release.
Funny that. He must realize he was fortunate to have had cold water to sip to keep up his endurance. That alcohol would only have served to lower his body temperature even more. Just his little grimly ironic quip, of course. Making light of a miserably traumatic experience. It's the British stiff upper lip. Of course by the time he was discovered and rescued just about every part of his body must have felt fairly stiff.
And, of course, now he has a priceless tale to recount over and over again at any bar he approaches; he was the one that got away. In a way it must have been convenient to be installed in a washroom, that continual imbibing would have led to continual urination, after all.
Labels: That's Life
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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