A retired teacher survived on tap water after getting trapped in a freezing bowling club toilet with no food or mobile phone for four days. mDavid Leggat was trapped at Kittybrewster and Woodside Bowling Club after the door to the gents jammed behind him.Trapped like Mars flies in a Klein Bottle.
The 55-year-old spent 16 hours of each day in darkness and, in a desperate bid to keep warm in the freezing building, he dipped his feet in hot water. "I did a survival course once and knew I had to keep my feet warm, so I kept running a basin of hot water and putting my feet in, to send the heat through my body," he xplained to the Aberdeen Evening Express.
Mr Leggat was eventually freed after Cathy Scollay, the club's cleaner, heard his cries for help.
'ELP ME!!! SOMEBODY 'ELP ME!!! I'M LOCKED IN THE LOO!!!
Mr Leggat's ordeal began last Monday afternoon when he entered the bathroom and the inside handle to the door jammed. A few days earlier the outside handle had fallen off.
Damn! Too bad it's illegal to carry a Leatherman. Now I am in deep.
The bowler said he quickly realised he was in for a long wait as the club is rarely used in winter.
Holy smoke. I could die in here.
Mr Leggat, who recently retired from Kemnay Academy, where he taught English and history, said: "I was lucky to get three hours' sleep a night."
Ms Scollay, who keeps her cleaning equipment in the gents, discovered Mr Leggat on Thursday morning.
G'Morning, Mr. Leggat. Wat are you doing here so early in the morning?
She said today: "I put on the light as normal, pushed the door and just heard a voice shouting 'you can't get in here, I have been locked in here for four days'. I just couldn't believe it."
Ms Scollay could not manage to free Mr Leggat, so she called club secretary Bob Ewing, who used a screwdriver to open the door.
Resourceful chap he was.
"David looked awfully grey and shaky when he came out," Ms Scollay said. "But he managed to walk up the road to his house."
"Nobody had been looking for David. A wife may have wondered where he was but he is not married," she said.
If he was married, and the missus was worried about him, would she look in the Loo at the bowling club?
Mr Leggat told the Evening Express: "At least there was a toilet to use. The only thing I regret is not getting trapped behind the bar."