Another Monday Morning

Monday the 2nd of Feb. (saved as draft, so hence the date above, I think)

We woke up to snow...lots of it. We don't get much snow down here, it's nice to see it if you don't have to go to work and can play. I remember taking my girls to school on the sledge, with hot hard boiled eggs in their pockets to keep their fingers warm.
'You can eat your egg at break time.' I'd say.
'Yeah.' said the girls in chorus giving each other knowing looks. It was only last week, more than twenty years on, Emma confessed, they never ate their eggs.
So, Monday morning, late as usual, I quickly throw some wild bird food at the angry blackbird in my garden, lock up and crunch my way past our little red van, looking sad with it's engine in bits, to my car parked in the drive, with a little voice in my head yelling, 'You shouldn't have done that...' I unlock my car, turned the engine on to help melt the thick layer of freezing snow and listened to Harry Potter blaring out, while I scraped away the snow. Did I tell you my central locking is playing up?? and why the little voice in my head was telling me not to lock the house and was now telling me, on no account to close the car door??? You've guessed it. The central locking suddenly went haywire. Click-click-click-click-click-clunk! and the car was locked! Engine running and me with no way of getting into it or back into the house to get the spare key.
'Oh NO! NO!' I yelled, with visions of Basil Fawlty hitting his little red car with a tree branch now in my head...'No you stupid car, no!'
'Is something wrong?' said a voice from the other side of the hedge. My neighbour, from across the road had earlier tried to reverse her car back into her drive but it had slid out again, and lucky for me, there she was with words like, 'Can I help?'
'Er? Any good at breaking in?' Were my first thoughts, which quickly changed to, 'Um...couldn't use your phone, could I?' Of course I didn't have my mobile. Someone from India, (can you believe a phone stalker!) has been ringing me day and night leaving messages, so I'd turned it off and left it in the kitchen. I had a sudden thought of, 'I could poke a stick through the cat flap and get the spare key or even my phone, but then 'neighbour' from across the road said,
'You can use my phone, while I make a cup of tea.' Of course not having my phone meant I couldn't remember Hubby's work number, so after ringing Portsmouth to get the number of the local Office, John finally came on the line.
'Yeah? What? Where you ringing from?'
I could hear the frown...
'Um,' I said slowly...'Remember I told you about the central locking not working properly and locking itself whenever it felt like it? Welllllllll'
'You've locked your keys in the car.'
'Yes...and the engines running...with the heater on and Harry Potter's playing, you can hear it... but at least all the snow's melted now.'
'Damit!' Came back the frowning voice..'I'm coming' and the phone clicked dead.
Twenty minutes later, hubby arrived. So, the moral of my story? Don't trust central locking and... if you have other cars parked in your drive, check to see if they have their keys, because sitting in our broken little red van, not more than a few feet from me all that time was a set of keys.
Shame that little voice in my head didn't tell me this....

Snowy pictures by Emma-Marie, taken near Eastleigh, Winchester.