In which I have what Mum would call an adventure...

...and everyone else would call a pain in the arse.

So today I went out to the gym mid-morning in an effort to beat the heat, which worked nicely. (Full workout btw Mum, you were right.) Returned home about an hour before qualifying for the British GP was about to kick off, plenty of time to eat lunch and do some housework.

About 1.45, 15 minutes before qualifying, I was in the middle of cleaning my room and decided to take down the wrapping of the 5 or so parcels I've received in the last couple of days (preparing my summer reading via Amazon - it's just incredible that I can get a book sent from England to my door in France for 3 euros TOTAL! They're not all that cheap of course, but wow!) Anyway, there I was, still in my gym shorts and tee, slipped on a pair of sandals to go downstairs and fatally decided not to take my keys.

I think you can probably see what comes next. Yep, I locked myself out of the house. Once you shut our front door downstairs, it's locked, you don't have to turn a key. The dumbest part of this? As I made my way down the stairs, all I was thinking was "better not lock yourself out, what would you do then?" And then I evidently closed the front door behind me without a care in the world, because I didn't even realise I'd done it until I'd deposited the recycling and went to go back in.

So there I was, on the street, on another blazing hot day, with nothing but the clothes I stood up in. No cellphone, no money, no nothing, just the knowledge that my flatmate would be at work all day, on the other side of town, and I would die without water. So I decided to ring my neighbours' doorbell (who I've never met) and basically beg. This was pretty awkward... The lady who answered the door was super nice, she let me in right away and suggested I ring my flatmate (don't know her number) or the rental agency in case they had a spare key (the most I remember from writing my rent cheques is that their name is some kind of acronym). I was sitting there on her couch in my gym clothes, sweating buckets, it was fricking awful. Eventually, she figured out that I could ring my flatmate at work (good job her), and my flattie rang the former flatmate who has a set of spare keys, but no dice, he was out of town. So then I had to really awkwardly ask for money for bus fare. I said 5 euros, and I think she thought I might be scamming her at that point, since the bus fare is only 1.35 each way, so she gave me 3. Fair enough, obviously. I only said 5 because it was like 30 degrees and I knew I'd be thirsty, but I coped (I actually spent my return bus fare on a bottle of water cos my ticket was valid for an hour - although you're probably not technically meant to use it for a return trip).

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get a bus there and back without having to wait at all, and got the keys off my flatmate no worries. Once I got back to mine and was reunited with my handbag, I went and bought the neighbours a bunch of flowers at the convenient Saturday flower market for being so nice, which I think they really appreciated. In this day and age it does actually restore your faith in humanity a bit to know that someone would let a crazy, shabbily-dressed, sweaty foreigner they've never seen before into their house, let them use their phone, leave them unsupervised to do so, and lend them money, all with no way of knowing whether I would ever pay them back, or if I'd pay them back by robbing the place. So I hope by paying them back in money and flowers I returned the favour in that way as well. I also feel proud of myself, because once over I probably would have been way too shy to ask for any help, let alone money, and would have just walked for like an hour out to the flatmate's work. Travel = character-building.

Took me about an hour to take the trip out to my flatmate's work and back, thus I missed the whole of qualifying :( And to cap it off, Button's miserably down in 14th!