He came in through the bathroom window

When the tattooed biker climbed through our bedroom window late last night, we were all mightily relieved.

The problem had begun a short time earlier, when a guest was making to leave. She struggled with the Yale lock on the front door, and complained that she couldn’t open it. I gave it a try. The knob required no effort to turn, but it did nothing; it had become disconnected from the locking mechanism itself.

As I started to unscrew the lock from the door, I began to realise the extent of the problem. It wasn’t the security chain, or the second lock further down the door. The problem was getting at the broken lock in the first place.

The frame of the door has a ‘London bar’ - a long metal strip running vertically and over the lock, to prevent the frame splitting if the door is given a good hard kicking. (You can also have a ‘Birmingham bar’, which runs down the other side of the door, to prevent it from being kicked straight off its hinges.)

The London bar has the side-effect of almost completely encasing the port for the lock, meaning that I couldn’t even sneak a thin screwdriver in and force the lock back. The only alternative was removing the London bar entirely, which, as its only virtue is its strength, and the screws had been repeatedly painted over, was going to be a long job for which I was ill-equipped.

At this point, news was broken to the guest in question that there was no other way out. The front windows downstairs do not open. (This is London.) The garden backs only onto other gardens. (This is London.) There is no side door. (This is London.) Unfortunately, the only ladder on the premises is not long enough to reach from the first floor windows.

At this point, the more alert member of the household spotted a neighbour across the road, tinkering with one of his fat-pipe motorbikes in the darkness. With his shaven head, beard, leather jerkin and tattoos (’Millwall’, ‘Malice’), he is easy to identify.

He is, by trade, a locksmith.

A few minutes later, having fetched a more serious ladder and an extremely serious screwdriver set, he was up and in through the window. A few minutes after that (”About the time it’ll take you to make me a cuppa”) the lock was sprung and he was fixing the dodgy lump of metal that had been trapping us.

It was properly late by now, so there was just a short sit down, cup of tea and chat about the neighbourhood (the kid next door who rides into the road without looking; the scagheads who he has warned not to trouble "this turning"; the successful local campaign to oust some troublemakers down the road; the bloke down the other way who was ‘adulterated’ by his wife before dying of the beer). Then on his way, refusing all offers of payment, as I knew he would.

To me, this too is London. You take it as you find it.