WHY FLAT DOORS SHOULD ALWAYS BE LOCKED AT NIGHT.

WHY FLAT DOORS SHOULD ALWAYS BE LOCKED AT NIGHT.

When one is jet lagged, tired, distracted, and the time is 12:15am, important things can be forgotten. The problem lies in what sort of thing it is you forget.
In our case, it was to lock the flat door.
Most of our class arrived in London between 9:00am and noon on our first day, but one of my flat mates wasn't landing at Heathrow until 11:00pm because of a desire to save money. I cannot fault her for this. I offered to stay up to meet her, an one of our classmates joined us. She arrived as expected at the flats at 12:00am, and he and I showed her the way up to our flat, he went off to his flat and she settled herself a bit.
I was exhausted and moderately delirious. I immedietly went to sleep, and she went onto the back balcony to call home.
I hadn't told her that the door doesn't always lock behind you because, well, I forgot about it. We'd only arrived that morning after all. And she didn't know to ask about it so...
A few minutes later, I heard a knock at the door, and then heard the door open. I figured the guy who had waited up with us had come back in to check on things, or something, and so when I heard a guy's voice holler "hello", I didn't think much of it. When a second voice joined the first, I figured another classmate must have come along. Then I heard the accents. We're guessing Italian.
There they were, in our kitchen door talking to my poor confused flat mate, and the two of them, about our age, were absolutely wasted. They were very friendly, and when they were told to "get out", they did so, after introducing themselves and offering us drinks and would we like to come upstairs for drinks (yeah..."drinks"). They were firmly but politely led out the door, and it was locked behind them. My flat mate and I proceeded to stare at each other in dazed amazement and then burst out laughing. We didn't stop for a good five minutes.
Then we crashed.
But. Lesson learned: ALWAYS LOCK YOUR FLAT DOOR.