Fortunately the trapped man had once taken a survival course, and although digging a snow cave, covering up against sandstorms or sucking out viper venom weren’t useful skills, the training did prove helpful. The pioneering spirit came to the aid of David Leggat during his four-day ordeal in the gents’ lavatory of the Kittybrewster and Woodside bowling club in Aberdeen.
“I knew I had to keep my feet warm,” he said, perhaps recalling Sir Ranulph Fiennes getting so badly frostbitten he had to saw off the ends of his own fingers with his penknife, “so I kept running a basin of hot water and putting my feet in, to send the heat through my body.”
Leggat, 55, was locking up the outdoor bowling clubhouse on Monday evening last week when he nipped into the lavatory before leaving, without bothering to switch the lights on. He missed the telltale clonk of the outside handle dropping off, and only realised his plight when he tried to open the door again.
He knew it could be a long wait. The next home fixture listed on the website of the club, where the retired teacher fills the role of wine steward, was against Grandholm, at 6.45pm on May 1 2008.
Leggat had no mobile phone, and was wearing only a light jacket and trousers: sleep on the first night was almost impossible because he was so cold, but the faint light of dawn from the skylight 12 feet above his head brought new hope.
Breakfast, lunch and supper were simple: “I had nothing to eat so I sipped on cold tap water to keep me going,” he said.
After eight hours, pitch darkness fell again. “It was very difficult to sleep in there as it was so small and cramped, and tiled floors and walls make it very uncomfortable and even colder. I was lucky if I got three hours of sleep a night.”
The third day brought some variety to the routine: the club secretary, Bob Ewing, dropped by to check everything was in order, but failed to hear Leggat’s cries for help from the back of the building.
The next day, cleaner Cathy Scollay arrived and, as she told BBC Scotland yesterday, when she switched on the lights she heard a voice shouting: “I have been locked in for four days.” Scollay could not open the door either, but called Ewing, and together they finally freed the Kittybrewster One.
“He was a bit shaky, and was as white as a sheet,” she recalled.
“At least there was a toilet to use,” Leggat said, apparently completely recovered from the experience. “The only thing I regret is not being trapped behind the bar.”
“Man spends four days trapped in bowling club’s toilets” by Maev Kennedy The Guardian.
