Wednesday 23 March 2011

An old man and a ladder.

Today was somewhat of a highlight in my otherwise fairly uninteresting existence. An old man turned up at my door, waving his hands and making sort of, Hungarian noises. By this I mean the words he said, none of them understandable had that friendly sort of tone only Hungarians have.
So, yes. After waving at me, he walked past me and straight down my hallway. At this point he stood pointing at the back door (locked) and making friendly noises again. I let him out assuming this was all he wanted and watched him go into his back garden through our side gate. All fairly normal.
Anyway, I go back to my room and continue to watch zombieland alongside formulating my own end of the world scenario survival plans when I hear the scraping sound only a very large ladder can make. Hollow aluminium fear. The man was at least 80, no taller than 5,2 and less than mobile. Nevertheless, there he was, shimmying and chuckling his way up to a second story window. I run out, stubbing my big toe on the way and try desperately to reason with him. All he did was laugh, shake his head and continue to try wriggling himself into the tiny window.
It was at this point that I desperately tried to decide how much he weighed and then whether I could infact catch him when he inevitably fell. The answers were 68 kilos and no, definitely not. Is it murder is you don't try to catch a falling pensioner? I don't know. Maybe. After what felt like minutes he fell into the house, punctuated by the sound of falling/ breaking pottery.
He turned, smiled and closed the curtain. What a champion.

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