Posted by Andrew on 15/10/2008, 10:09 pm, in reply to "Your Funny Stories"

Not so much a funny story as a “funny” story. I was in Paris recently at noon, at the Gare du Nord, to catch the Eurostar back to London. The Eurostar is on the first floor (don’t ask) and there is a lift to the ground floor, which I took. It reached the bottom and the doors did not open: classic. I was not worried as I was confident that the doors would be released in good time for the train. However you do think about the times when people are stuck in a lift for hours; what would one do in this case? Well… there was a young couple in with me, so that would be awkward: trying to pee in a corner. But what made this exceptional was that the lift was totally glass; and furthermore it was freestanding on the station concourse (at the first floor it was edge on to the floor). So peeing in a corner would not be on, would it? Talk about goldfish in a goldfish bowl. The situation became a farce. We pressed the various buttons and nothing happened. The people waiting for the lift did the same and the doors stayed closed. I pressed the alarm button; when the voice answered I asked the other bloke to speak and before he could, the voice disappeared. The people outside went to find help and four (!) policemen arrived (did I mention that I had also seen three soldiers with machine guns). They looked, shrugged and wandered off. Then three station staff came along, looked, shrugged (ah.. that gallic shrug), and wandered off, no doubt to find the one technician in Paris who would look, shrug and phone the makers who would……. be at lunch, which in France can last till three. At that point I decided to be master of my own fate; the other guy and I heaved on the doors and…. they slid open. We then noticed the twin lift opposite already had a sign on it saying out of order, and a member of staff put a similar sign on ours. It was at that point that I noticed there was an escalator.

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