By Jonny McCambridge

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I’m still somewhere in the grey land so it takes a moment to understand. I’m turning the door handle, the door is not opening. That’s not right. I turn on the hallway light and crouch down. The handle is moving but not opening the latch of the door. Something must have broken. It is 6:07am and too early to employ my usual DIY fix of phoning my da. I make a list of options: l break down the door (great expense and the humiliating prospect that I won’t be strong enough to do it); l smash the glass in the door and reach through (probability of me snicking a vital vein or artery); l go outside and then try to get in to the kitchen through an exterior window (see previous). l just go back to bed (attractive, but ultimately not productive); I know that I need tools. Happily, I own a tool box. Unhappily, the box is in the kitchen which I cannot access. I examine the handle. It’s held in place by four small screws. An easy job to remove it if I had my screwdriver, which is in the kitchen. Or my drill, which is in the kitchen. Or even any of my kitchen knives, which are… well, you get the picture. I go upstairs to search in the bathroom cabinet. I descend with a small silver pair of nail scissors. I begin to work at the screws of handle. After a few moments one of them starts to move. Just a little at first. A little tremble of excitement and pleasure runs through me. I feel like Clint Eastwood in Escape from Alcatraz. I wonder how easy it would be to make a model of my own head from leftover bars of soap. I force my mind to come back to reality, chastising myself for feeble concentration. Soon I have loosened one of the screws enough that I can remove it. I hold it in front of my face, gazing upon it like Indiana Jones with a long-lost archaeological wonder. I set it aside and begin to work on the other screws. They stubbornly refuse to budge. I spend several minutes heaving and scraping and sighing but nothing happens. Soon, I have to admit that this isn’t going to work. The first screw must have been already loose. I study the nail scissors. The little blades are slightly curved at their ends. The reason for this design eludes me but it seems to be the main factor in my failure. I go back upstairs to the bathroom cabinet. I find another pair of nail scissors – with straight blades. I begin to work again at one of the tiny screws. It’s a laborious and frustrating process but eventually it begins to give just a little. I have to keep readjusting the position of the scissors and of my body to get it to move a tiny amount. The process seems interminable. The dark has given way to light before I’ve finally managed to extract all of the screws. Now I can hear that my son is awake and moving around in the bedroom above me. My wife is grudgingly getting ready to face the day also. Removing the handle has exposed a long, ugly strip of black four-sided metal. This bolt controls the mechanism which allows the door to open. All I have to do is get it to turn. I try to turn it, struggling to get a grip on the metal with my fingers. It doesn’t move. I wrap a pair of my son’s pyjama trousers, which I find lying about, around the bolt and try again to manoeuvre it. Without success. I consider pulling the bolt out of the door, but I fear a wrong step. The bolt is the link with the other side of the door handle and to break that link may be fatal. I suspect finding a method to get the door to open without the bolt inserted would prove to be as difficult and elusive as the search for a north west passage through America to unlock the trade routes to Asia. My family are now downstairs and ask why I am causing a racket. I take some time to explain the problem. I tell them about my struggles, the search for suitable tools, the different types of nail scissors, the tortuous process of removing the screws. My wife says: “So did the handle just come off in your hand then?” I breathe deeply. I crouch down at the handle to attempt to explain the process again. My wife bends over my shoulder to take a closer look. Unfortunately this coincides with me throwing up my arms in frustration and I catch her full on the head. She turns away, covering her injury with her arms. I race after her, mumbling apologies. I have two thoughts. 1) I hope she’s OK. 2) She seems to be milking it a bit. I express one thought. The other I keep to myself. When she recovers, my wife suggests pulling the bolt out of the door. I shake my head sadly. I tell her about breaking the link with the other side of the handle. I also tell her about the search for the northwest passage through America but she seems to have stopped listening. She says that if the only other option is to break down the door, then our situation cannot be further injured by removing the bolt. I think about this. The logic seems flawless. Annoyingly. I reach down and slowly pull out the bolt. I examine it and then slide it back into the hole. I turn it. The door opens without difficulty. I nod my head. “Just as I thought,” I mumble. I go to make breakfast.