Vanessa Austin Locke: Caught in the act
When I was a kid I was naughty and restless and high-spirited, and I enjoyed every moment of hell-raising right up until I got caught (and I always get caught). Things haven’t improved much as I’ve grown up. You see, my conflict is that I’m actually a good girl, stuck in the body of a bad girl. At the moment I’m living in a community where best behaviour is a pre-requisite, there’s a strict social order, and more things depend on my good conduct than securing a modelling job with L’Oreal. Well, it’s like a red rag to a bull, and, quite frankly, I’m having problems behaving myself.
This week my poor deportment reached new heights (literally) when I was caught in the act (literally). So… picture the scene. You’ve got a week off and are indulging in your first lie-in when scaffolding is erected outside your apartment at 8am and a builder begins blasting you with a local radio station that plays more ads than offensively bad pop-cheese.
My grumpy bedtime buddy got up and made his way to the bathroom and I lay there as the red mist descended and pure, unadulterated rage began coursing through my body. Rage and I, we’re old friends, and I knew what would come next, although I couldn’t have imagined that things could possibly get worse than being forced to listen to Radio Generic Province all day.
Hauling myself out of bed I wrapped a very little towel around my very naked body, went to the window with the intention of yelling at the builders, only to find they were nowhere to be seen.
“Too livid for it to occur to me to put any clothes on, I opened the window and climbed out onto the four-storey high scaffolding”
Too livid for it to occur to me to put any clothes on, I opened the window and climbed out onto the four-storey high scaffolding. Below me the town high street was bustling with life as the prim and proper people of the parish began their quaint and elegant day. I felt the wind in my hair and the exhilaration of vertigo shudder through my body, and then, of course, the window slammed shut behind me, trapping the corner of my towel.
I was stuck. My rescuer was reading Andrew Marr’s Modern Britain on the loo, and that is a long book. I couldn’t reach the radio without dropping my towel and, as if on cue, the heavens opened and it began to pour with sweet Devonshire rain.
Eventually, after about 40 minutes, my knight found the mental, physical and spiritual strength to get off the loo and come looking for me. Not wishing to yell out and attract the attention of the township below I turned around to wave through the window, only to discover that the curtains were still closed and there was no way he would see me until he opened them, and why would anyone do that when the view was half-naked builders? (Well… I would obviously.)
Knowing that there was no way he’d ever imagine that I’d actually clamber out onto the scaffolding to whip the batteries out of the radio, I was forced to issue an SOS at the top of my lungs, causing everyone in the street below to gaze up into the stormy skies and up my towel.
“If anyone asks, you were rescuing a cat.” Is the official line I’ve been given.
The moral of this story? Don’t listen to bad music.
Follow me: @vnessenvy
