Recently, my wife and I were due to leave for the airport when disaster struck. We were packed and ready to go and the taxi was on its way, so we took the lift to the ground floor. As the lift doors opened, my wife stepped out and I passed the two small suitcases out to her. When I returned into the lift to get the two small bags, the doors closed, with me inside.

The doors stubbornly refused to reopen. They were completely jammed with me, two small bags, passports and tickets inside and my wife and the suitcases outside. The lift phone worked but neither of the two service numbers were answered and there was no mobile signal. The taxi arrived and my wife gave the driver the bad news. “No panic,” he says and produces a triangular Allen key and opened the lift doors, letting me out.

It turned out that, before becoming a taxi-driver, he had been a lift-maintenance engineer and still carried a lift key. Close to a chance-in-a-million and this was the first time in six years of taxi-driving he had to use the key.

Obviously, we were grateful to him but he declined a tip for the lift-service, saying he was glad to have been able to help.

So, if you are stuck in a lift, call taxi 25 and Glenn Abela will fix it. Thanks to him, we caught our flight.