A homeless night with Dylan Moran...
As a preamble to this story, I have a new girlfriend, Julianne. We've been seeing each other for two months, and she's great.
So, the saga of Dylan Moran. A night I'm not going to forget in a long while.
A few months ago, my friend Brian sought expressions of interest from his friends to join him at Wrest Point Casino to see Dylan Moran. Four of us answered in the affirmative: Mick, Donald, Maryann, and myself. Unbeknownst to me, the others later all arranged to go in one car. This isn't a supremely important fact right now, but it will come into the tale later.
The night of Wednesday, April 18th 2007 arrived. With the show starting at 8pm, I decided to leave at around 7:15. I walked out the front door, secure in the knowledge that my mobile phone, wallet and keys were in my pockets.
A split second after shutting the front door behind me I realised that perhaps my knowledge wasn't as secure as I first thought. I quickly checked my pockets to discover that yes, indeed, I was without one of the three items. It was, of course, my keys that were missing.
In my entire life I've never locked myself out before.
OK. Don't panic. Think. What to do?
The only spare key I had was in my car's glove box. And my car key was...with the house key. Inside the house. Great. No go there then.
Thank the lucky stars (I must state for the record that there's no such thing as luck, but let's just imagine that for the purposes of this story there is, and that there are some celestial bodies that possess this imaginary substance) I had my mobile with me. I haven't even had the phone for 12 months yet, and I briefly wondered what I would have done had I not had it. Knock on the neighbour's door I guess and ask to use his phone.
Anyway, I decided to call Julianne and place her on standby for a lift to Wrest Point. And also to talk through the situation and look at my options. I then rang Brian and asked his location. They had just pulled into the car park at the casino. No help of a lift there then.
I rang Jooles back and asked nicely if she could in fact drive me to the show. She could. And she did. On the way we arranged that I could stay at her place that night and then I would contact the real estate agent in the morning to obtain a key.
So I arrived at the casino at around 7:45 with plenty of time to spare.
The show was great. I can honestly say that Dylan is one funny bastard. We all thoroughly enjoyed it.
Afterwards, Donald & Maryann offered me a lift to Julianne's place as it was on their way home. The five of us piled into their car...and sat there. The state of the queue to leave the car park at that time was a fairly accurate replica of the motorway on the latest episode of Doctor Who. Except our cars weren't flying.
We remained sitting there for a few minutes, not even able to reverse out of the parking space. So we decided to go back into the casino and have a drink.
We went to a fairly swish bar. I ordered bourbon & coke, Donald & Maryann ordered lattes, and Mick and Brian ordered hot chocolates. Only when Mick ordered Hot Chocolate, he jokingly requested the group, not the drink. The rest of us laughed. The waitress looked perplexed.
Due to not taking down our table number (we hadn't chosen a table yet and it was fairly quiet) and the relative quietness of the bar suddenly becoming quite unquiet, our drinks were delayed in the confusion.
Well, everyone else's drinks were delayed. My bourbon & coke arrived promptly, but the coffees and hot chocolates took over 20 minutes to arrive, even after the waitresses had come to the table and checked our orders. Twice.
Finally, everyone obtained their beverage of choice. Then, just as we were about to leave, who should come in and sit on the next table but Dylan Moran himself. We sat there grinning to ourselves for a few moments before Maryann ushered us out.
No one wanted to annoy the man who was obviously there for a quiet drink. So we left quietly. Except Mick. Mick walked over to Dylan, interrupting him as he was ordering wine, thanked him for the show, and shook his hand.
I wasn't sure whether to be mortified or jealous. I think I was a combination of both.
Funny how we'd never have been in the proximity of the guy had either (a) the car park flowed, or (b) the drinks arrived in a reasonable time frame.
The car park was mostly empty when we got back to the car, and it wasn't long before I arrived at Julianne's.
We decided that the next morning Jooles would go to work on the bus as usual and I could have her car to pick up the keys from the real estate agent.
So we did just that. But not particularly smoothly. I rang work to let them know I was going to be late, then tried calling the real estate agent. After trying for a frustrating twenty minutes to ring their local (city) office, and hearing only the after hours phone message saying their business hours were 8:30am to whenever (it was 8:50 on my third try), I rang another of their offices.
The woman who answered was quite pleasant and assured me she would contact the city office and have someone call me back.
Thirty minutes elapsed. No phone call.
So I rang the city office again, and this time they answered. It turned out the lady who looks after my unit no longer works there so apparently that meant no one had the responsibility to call me back. After talking to another girl, I was advised they would leave the keys for me to collect at the front desk.
So, after all that, I drove Jooles' car into the city to pick up the keys and drove home.
After returning the keys, I finally arrived at work at 11:00, only three hours late.
I've now given Jooles a spare key. I think that's a wise move, don't you?