The Lift

or The Elevator


Firstly Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Margo and I started to move some of the larger items over to the new place on Friday night as we had rented a "StreetVan" which gives you free petrol per day of hire of 30 miles or the quick thinking MArgo suggested over night to get 60 miles free. Plus we could start to move things slightly sooner and maybe get in a large supermarket run.

Now things were going quite well - we managed to get the van full of the larger items and get a parking space in the road directly next to the front door of the current place (old). We then drove over to the new place and started to unload by using the lift. This went fine until we moved the third load and we entered the lift and suddenly all went quiet. For the first time in our lives we pressed the alarm button to the sounds of a prerecorded message saying "your call is important to us please wait your position X in the queue" (we later found out the call went through to a vodaphone (like at&t) call centre) anyways after eventually registering our problem and then waiting for half an hour we gave them a call back as the call centre said the technician should call the lift to say his eta. The slight issue was that the lift phone had a short in it and kept cutting out and redialing every 20 seconds so the conversations with the call centre were very rushed! Another issue was that I had no mobile coverage and Margo's phone was in her bag in the flat. Anyways after 1 hour and 30 minutes we heard someone outside who asked if anyone was inside as by this point the lift alarm (which was very high pitch) had started. They then rang the lift operator who was actually very good apparently and sounded very concerned (why they out source their emergency calls to vodaphone if they have people working at 10.30 on a friday night i do not know!) and said the operator on call tonight lived in Essex (no where near Fulham) but then they (the folks who found us) said that the fire and police were currently outside the development as they had been called to a fire alarm outside the development elsewhere. the people that found us (very nice couple about 45) went to get them. Anyways after about 10 minutes of activity three massive and i mean massive guys in uniform let us out. So to get this door open involved 2 policewomen 2 neighbours, and 4 firemen (one was on the next floor) ooo and the technician who arrived 20 minutes later.

we didnt go to the supermarket....