Herself goes to bed at 11 and gets up at 8, I go to bed at 2 or 3 and get up at 11. This morning I was awakened by thumping on the window. Looking out I saw Herself clad in a nightie and with bare feet outside in the rain and cold. WTF!
After I let her in, she explained that she had been unable to open the bathroom door from the inside, had gone out of the small bathroom window and come round to the front of the house to get let in. I did manage to open the bathroom door from the outside, but when I tried to open it from the other side it was just jammed. So I extracted the lock mechanism from the door, since there's a brass hook thingy to lock the bathroom from the inside, and reattached the handles, round shiny black ceramic knobs. Afterwards remarked that I was going to murder the next architect I met, but Herself said the builder, not the architect, was the person responsible. By then however my kill-lust had died down a bit, so I'll spare the builder.
The lock mechanism is about six inches long, pressed steel with brass works, and contains a sort of rack and pinion arrangement working against a spring, very simple and sensible. But the rack and pinion had stripped and jammed, bumboclaaat! The square hole for the doorhandle through-spindle had semi-disintegrated in the door causing the trouble. There are no maker's marks on the thing, no idea where it came from.
Another of these things gave trouble years ago and I bashed it up so badly, without removing it, that the door to the room I am in now doesn't shut fully, but that's no problem really, it sort of shuts. All the others work very sweetly given an occasional squirt of lubricant. But I don't trust them any more.
Damn low-grade garbage... I'm too old for this sort of thing. To add insult to injury, Herself claims I was giving 'gales of laughter' when describing the night's travails to the handyman bloke who is often here (none of this is his fault). This is pure slander. A little giggle perhaps, but I'm not heartless when it comes to Herself. She is when it comes to me, but that's different apparently. Tsk.
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