The sun came out while I was considering a blog post on the route the Survivalists had taken to Alaska, so I thought I would have a break and do a bit of gardening. When I tried to go back in for a late lunch I found the door locked.

I remembered, unhappily, that the night before I had had one of my British attacks. In Britain one closes windows and locks doors at bedtime. Once, on a hot summer night many years ago in Oxford, I didn’t close the window and someone crept in and stole all my husband’s jackets. At first I refused to believe it. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said to my husband, who seemed to be accusing me, “who would want your jackets?” Apparently not even the thief did, because the jackets were afterwards discovered in a nearby alley.

A year or two later we bought a house in rural Oxfordshire next to the combined post office and village shop. Two weeks after we moved in I stood idly watching out my kitchen window as three men entered the shop. In just a few minutes they came out, jumped into their car and drove away. When the car went around the bend faster than I thought appropriate I memorized the number plate. A moment later the postmaster appeared in his doorway, blood dripping from his forehead. I went round to see if he was all right, and when the police arrived I explained that, although I hadn’t actually realized what had happened until the robbers were gone, I had noted the car number.

The policemen were somewhat puzzled by this. They said, “Why would you do that?”

I said, “I’m a very irritable person, and I take down people’s numbers all the time.”

The next day the headline in the Oxford Times was “Have-a-go-hero foils armed robbers”. When the postmaster called his dog instead of handing over the cash the would be robbers hit him on the head with their air gun and fled. The article mentioned that information from a “sharp-eyed villager” had led police to the abandoned getaway car. Although the baddies were never caught, the shopkeepers got invited to a celebration in London of brave postmasters and mistresses and were awarded a medal.

Meanwhile I was repeatedly assured that such a thing had never before happened in the village.

About a year later a man knocked on my door, said he understood that I had done the Post Office a service a while back and with my permission he would like to come for me in a week’s time so that the Royal Mail could express its gratitude.

On the appointed afternoon a large Rover car arrived at my house. The driver wore a hat and there was a clean piece of blue paper on the floor so that I didn’t have to put my feet anywhere other feet had been. I was driven ten miles to the Swindon Sorting Office where I was given a tour and a nice cup of tea with two bourbon cream biscuits (that’s a British cookie containing neither bourbon nor cream) and a cheque for £30, before I was chauffeured back home. I always meant to buy a letter opener with that money.

Like my village, this island is mostly a pretty peaceful place. A “crime wave” was reported some years ago, but it turned out a lot of teenagers were stealing their parents’ stash. And then there was the night a group of young men came over from the mainland and broke into five or six houses and loaded up their car. Unfortunately they missed the last ferry back, fell asleep waiting for the first one, and were arrested at dawn.

Nevertheless, locking the door seemed a sensible, British thing to do, although I am assured no one else on the Island ever bothers. How was I to know that these Yankee door knobs were made so that even while locked you can get out, but it stays locked so you can’t get in again? Far as I know we don’t have this sort of treacherous device in the UK.

When I found I couldn’t get in the front door I went unhappily around the back, where my memory that I had diligently locked that door too was confirmed. I checked the windows – all also locked.

I went into the former garage, now my mother’s studio (unlocked), and poked about for a spare key. I found several spare keys to the studio.

Because I had only popped out to pull some dandelion weeds I had no phone or money or car keys, and only slip-on gardening shoes. I know few people here and no one’s number. I doubted there was a locksmith on the Island or that anyone else would have a key to my mother’s house, but every other man I had met so far was a builder or a firefighter or both. Surely either could fix this.

Fluffy had no collar or lead (leash) so I shut him in the fenced back garden, got on my bike, and rode around to one of my mother’s best friends, G, a woman about my age, whose husband, 17 years her junior, is of the both sort.

There was no sign of G, but not only was her house unlocked, the door was ajar. I went inside, shouted to see if anyone was home, and looked around for pen and paper. Not finding either I saw G’s handbag on the table, and, after a moment’s hesitation, riffled through it. Wallet, but no pen. It occurred to me that mine would be a very compromising position if G or her Firefighter Builder husband should come in.

In a pile of post there was an open letter, official looking, about some structural building work, but it was the only full size sheet of paper I could find. In the living room I discovered a blunt pencil, and reasoning that 1) they wouldn’t fail to notice a note written on the back of this document and 2) as I was only writing in pencil it couldn’t do any serious harm, I left a message.

I wrote, for good measure: “Cold, hungry and homeless,” and then bicycled home, back to gardening. The studio holds one of the three refrigerators here, well stocked with Diet Coke, and in the rental apartment (also unlocked) I found some old mixed nuts left by the last occupants. Nor was I really cold in my gardening tee shirt, as long as I kept digging and raking. But homeless, except for the rental, sans computer and current book, was looking possible. It was late afternoon on a Friday and I was banking a lot on G and her Firefighter Buider.

I hadn’t put my watch on before I went out and there didn’t seem to be a clock in either the studio or the apartment. As I gardened I tried to guess what time it must be, and how long before G got off work.

Early evening G pulled into the drive and a tall woman wearing a black straw cowboy hat got out with her. The tall woman had long black hair with grey streaks at the temple, a strikingly white face and heavily pencilled red lips. She looked like a western Cruella de Vil and introduced herself as a former model and current makeup artist, fourth generation Island resident.

G said her husband had called her with my message. “Didn’t that document look important to her?” he asked. “The engineering report to be filed with the county?”

The three of us surveyed the house. G remembered that a window, reachable only by scurrying up one side of the roof used to be left open for the cat Abelard. We could just see it from below, and it was clearly closed now, Abelard having been dead for some years and Eloise not able to jump higher than a bed. But there was a chance it might not be locked. Cruella didn’t volunteer to climb, and G and I were both too short to reach the bottom of the roof from the ladder we had. At last G declared that her husband was my only hope.

The Firefighter arrived, fetched a longer ladder, lifted himself onto the roof, made his way to the top, removed the screen, opened the window and climbed in, as we cheered below.

Later, in the Island diner, Cruella grabbed my chin, plucked off my glasses, and turned my head side to side. “You have wonderful bones,” she said, “I’d love to do your make up.”

I bought G’s dinner (the Firefighter having gone home). Just before they parted G and Cruella exchanged prescription drugs in the car. Cruella advanced G some valium and in return G gave her something more interesting. “These are for dogs, though,” G said tentatively.

“No problem,” said Cruella.

And that, sports fans, is why there was no blog post on Friday.