What the hell would you do if you got locked in a public toilet for four days? Panic? Write your will on a roll of loo paper? Lay down on the piss-soaked floor and wait for the sweet release of death to claim you? Probably.
Not Glady Phillips, though. The 82-year-old recently went to pick up her pension in her hometown of Felixstowe, Suffolk and, after popping to the shops for a few bits, headed into the town centre’s new public toilets to spend a penny before heading home.
The only problem? The toilets hadn’t actually been opened to the public yet and, these being some new-fangled, hi-tech automatic toilets, the door locked behind her, making Gladys a prisoner.
Not that the nana let a little thing like being locked in a public toilet get her down. In fact, she came out of the whole ordeal in great spirits.
‘I wasn’t really concerned at first when I couldn’t get out,’ Gladys told the* Suffolk Gazette*. ‘In fact I was just relieved I’d managed to go to the loo! I kept banging on the door and walls, and shouting for help, but obviously no one could hear me. I realised I had to tough it out, and so I sat on the loo and began knitting.’
You see kids, one of the stops on Gladys’s day out had been to pick up a new ball of pink wool. ‘I began making a scarf, which one of my lucky grandchildren will now get for Christmas,’ she said.
Four days later, when some workmen came in to finish off the job, they found Gladys finishing up the last few final stitches.
So what did Gladys eat? ‘I’d also popped into the sweet shop after collecting my pension, so I had a full bag of mint imperials to eat, which kept my spirits up no end. The loo was very clean and cosy. I was able to sleep on my big overcoat and was lovely and warm, and if I got cold I just sat under the hand dryer for a while.’
So there you have it chaps – enough of your millenial whining on your Twitters and your Snapchats. All hail Gladys Phillips, the pensioner who stared death in the eye through the medium of a public toilet and decided that, rather than have a panic, she should instead do what all sensible nanas do and knit a bloody scarf.
Merry Christmas to Gladys and all the other nanas out there.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.