Stuck in the lift

It had to happen. After locking myself out and worrying about getting stuck in the lift, I did. It is not a good place to be stuck. It happened on the sixth floor after thinking about things for a while on the seventh. I was on my way home from Manoel theatre and the enjoyment I always get from walking back at night through St George square kept me from even having a twinge of anxiety when I got into the lift. Another person got in on the same floor and he got out alright on the fifth but the ancient mechanism must have got confused between the fifth and the seventh and decided to split the difference and shut down on the sixth. I shocked myself with my initial surge of panic. Luckily, the light stayed on so I was able to look at the array of buttons and realise that the only way of letting people know I was stuck was to ring the bell. So I did - twice and for a long time.

After a while, I heard male voices talking in Maltese. When they realised it was the English woman trapped inside they asked "Are you alright?"

"No, I'm not alright, I'm stuck in a lift."

There were strange scrabbling and scratching noises outside that seemed to go on for a long time. After a while when it became obvious that the feeble scratching wasn't going to make a difference and we had worked out that I was on the sixth floor and the liftman would not come until Monday (it was Saturday night), I suggested they go upstairs and fetch my neighbour because he had experience of getting women out of lifts since his daughter had met a similar fate a few weeks before. I have a lot of confidence in my neighbour. He says very little and persists in working through possible solutions until he manages to solve whatever the problem might be.

Sure enough, after a little bit of grunting and banging, the fingers of two hands appeared on the edge of the lift door. Another two hands were inserted higher up and there was a lot of heaving to make a two inch gap but then no more. So I added my hands to the collective effort and pulled from my side. It gave enough for my neighbour to wedge himself in the partly open door and hold it open long enough for me to jump over him and into the arms of the two young men who had heard the initial bell ringing and come out to help. I was saved!

I tell myself that walking up and down seven flights of stairs is good exercise. Even after the lift man came on Monday morning and fixed it, I had determined that I was going to carry on using the stairs but my resolve has waned as people gently told me in passing that the lift was fixed now. I guess I have to live with an unpredictable lift and trust my neighbour.

The photo is of graffiti in the old prison museum in Rabat, Gozo. The technique is different from Australian Aboriginal hand painting which uses blown paint to outline the hand. On the soft globigerina limestone used in Malta and Gozo, it is easy to scratch the outline into the wall. But the idea of affirming identity by outlining your own hand is perhaps universal. Maybe I'll suggest that everyone who gets stuck in the lift should leave their handprint.