My apartment complex is protected by a high fence accessed by a key-operated gate, and inside the fence and beside the gate are mailboxes. To get the mail you open the box with a key, take the contents and close it - unless, of course, you are distracted. A credit card bill will do this magnificently.

Opening my latest bill and being overcome by a sudden desire to be ill, I wandered out to the street. I might have been heading for the nearby river, I'm not sure, but I was returned to reality by the clunk of the gate shutting behind me, realising a nanosecond later that my keys were still dangling in the lock of the letterbox.

People pass through that gate all day, but not when you are standing outside waiting for them to open it. There is a camera trained on the entrance which beams pictures through to residents' television sets. If there is nothing on telly, residents can always tune into Channel 3 and watch The Gate as people go to and from the building. I've never found The Gate to be all that entertaining, but it is marginally better than Big Brother.

"Perhaps," I thought, "some fellow resident will be sitting in their apartment so bored with their existence that they will be watching Channel 3," so I waved at the camera and pointed at the gate. If there had been anyone watching, they obviously thought I had a loose (and ever loosening) grip on reality, had very likely escaped from an institution and was staging a mime performance outside the gate. "Morons," I thought, looking at the camera, pointing at the gate and making lock-opening motions. "Anyone can see I want to get in."

What I needed was a large sheet of cardboard and a marker pen with which to write: "I know you don't know who I am but I live here. I'm locked out. Open the gate, you idiot!"

It occurred to me that if I started to disrobe it would surely attract attention, but visions of being arrested for lewd and scandalous behaviour stilled my hand along with the realisation that if I saw anyone who looked like me taking their clothes off outside the gate, opening it wouldn't be considered an option.

Deciding against a career as a sidewalk stripper, I gave up and did what any enterprising housebreaker would do: I walked to the back of the property and climbed over the fence. I retrieved my house keys from the letterbox, went back to my apartment, did a few chores and, grabbing the car keys, went to pick up my fiancée from the airport.

When we arrived back at my place, she was more than a little irritated to discover that we were locked out. I'd been separated from my house keys again.

   "Twice in one day?" she asked, rolling her eyes skywards.
   "It could happen to anyone," I said, attempting to extricate my head from beneath the car seat where it had become jammed as I searched for the errant house keys.
   "Tell me where you've been," said Katrien, and I retraced my steps for her.
   "And then," I said, "I took out the garbage," at which point she looked at me and I looked at her.

There are no individual bins in this complex, just big and incredibly malodorous industrial ones. After climbing around in one for several minutes, I found my bag of rubbish several layers down and inside the bag, covered in tomato sauce, were the house keys.