The Top Floor Flat

Well, you’ve all risen wonderful to my selfish demand for more comments. Excellent. I also appear to have gotten Milly to start watching Doctor Who which I think is like… massive karma points in the grand scheme of things.

So, yesterday was fairly uneventful until about 6pm. See, the plan was to meet Kathryn and Jenny (my friend from high school and her friend from college) at around 7pm, possibly grab a snack or small dinner, then go to a swing dancing class that my colleague from work recommended. After I finished work, I went into the bathroom to change from work clothes into a dress and dancing shoes (read: impractical heels – which were suggested on the website for the class) which I had brought with me in my backpack.

Then things started to go a little nuts. I called Jenny (who was going to be spending the night at my flat before catching an early flight back to Russia today where she’s studying abroad for the summer) who was still at least an hour away from our meeting point – where we were planning on meeting in about 20 minutes. I got on the bus and because the weather was absolutely atrocious, everything on the roads was impossibly slow. So, fifteen minutes and three blocks later, I called Kathryn, who was already at the arranged meeting point, to say *I* was another half hour away.

I finally got to our meeting point, although Jenny was still a half hour behind us. We’d basically missed the beginning of the dance class at this point, but decided to try this nice Italian restaurant that Kathryn’s friend had told her about and began to walk there with the plan to have Jenny catch up with us at the restaurant. As we passed an ATM, I realised I didn’t have any cash so went to take out my wallet, only to realise it was gone. I, rather understandably I think, panicked (in a completely controlled and not panicky way, but I still panicked) and started searching through my backpack – which responded by busting a zipper which I couldn’t seem to fix. Keep in mind that it’s raining cats and dogs and we’re on an uncovered street as I’m frantically searching through my bag.

It occurs to me exactly where my wallet was – on the sink counter of the ladies room at the office. I was now about 45 minutes away from the office and could in theory go back but because it was such a long trip and we had now arrived at the restaurant which told us the kitchens were closing in half an hour I really didn’t want to go back if I didn’t have to (i.e. if it would still be there in the morning or if it was already long gone). I called Alex, my boss, who has been incredibly helpful in the past to ask his opinion on that point. His response? He called the maintainece staff and a guy he know who worked in another office in the building, got the guy to go into the women’s bathroom and *find* my wallet so I could pick it up today, and then offer to come meet me where I was in the city to give me money to get home if I needed it (thankfully I didn’t – I had my travel card which gets me anywhere in the city). Honestly, I’m pretty sure I have the world’s nicest boss. Talk about building company loyalty.

In the end, Kathryn spotted me money and we had a great dinner and had a lot of fun with Kathryn and Jenny. I managed to get all of my stuff home in a relatively dry manner despite the broken backpack, and today I’ll get my wallet back. It was a suitably embarrassing escapade (especially the bits where I was pulling my clothes out of my stuffed backpack on a crowded street in the middle of the rain looking for my wallet) but lesson learned. Crisis averted thanks to really, really nice people.