Day one: Sunday roast for lunch. B is sick but T made a same day urgent care appointment that was quick and efficient and I’m sure absolutely every interaction we have with the NHS will be similarly positive. Off to a great start! 

Day two: The AirBnB is above a boarded up pharmacy.  We have to walk through a trash-strewen alley to access the house and go through a very tall wooden fence to the yard.  When T left to pick the kids up from school, the combination on the padlock to the gate must have gotten reset when he was scrambling the numbers to lock it and it wouldn’t open. He and the kids went to the supermarket, assuming it was just a matter of an hour or so before someone came to cut the lock.  Messages to the host were as shouts into the void.  He came back and passed me some fruit, jam, and a bar of chocolate through a loose board in the fence (the yogurt didn’t fit).  I gave him a blanket, a frying pan, plates, and clothes so they could spend the night in our actual house down the street, which luckily had at least one partially assembled bunk bed.  How many bundles had been passed through that fence under the cover of night since the house was built? It felt like the building’s will to steer us toward this moment from the start.  

Day three: I was freed by a very apologetic young woman who tried a hacksaw and then a crowbar, both with cardboard sleeves still attached.

Day four: Now we’re in the real house which has five different locks, all of which require a key to lock them from the inside, so I’m sure there are more lock pratfalls to come.