At 4AM I awoke feverish, dizzy, drenched in sweat and hardly able to breath, the room was hotter than a sauna. Flicking on the bedside light I stumbled up and across the room, searching for the heat control which was eventually found by the door set at 32 Celsius – hotter than a Spanish siesta at the height of summer. It was immediately pulled back to 21. Sleep though refused to reach back out for me and after a period of wriggling about I gave up and decided to make myself a drink. Swinging both feet onto the floor I plodded into the living area, hearing, but not registering the soft resonant clunk of the door closing behind me. Having already learned that the condo was mine for the week and with the blinds firmly closed, I had no reservation in padding about wearing nothing but my blue y-fronted pants.

Slouched on the sofa, coffee was consumed black and extra sweet while flicking through endless TV channels that somehow, despite every forth purporting to be a vendor of news, did not contain one item related to the ongoing 'war on terror'; which was surprising to me as the breaking news that morning as I had dressed in Sussex, had been of casualties to US personnel at the hands of some Islamic insurgency. I settled on skipping through the sports channels which were full of the American Football draft, before pressing the red button. With the digital display on the video telling me it was just after 6AM I plodded back to my room. I got as far as the door.

The knob was round and a golden colour, the door a fairly sturdy construction painted glossy white with a Georgian panelled inlay. It had been over two years since I had last visited Provo and through the fog of cold and weariness had completely forgotten that room doors automatically locked when they closed.

After moments of cursing with indescribable anguish and frustration I sat back down in my blue y-fronted pants and considered my options. All my paraphernalia had been deposited in the room, which included the blue fobbed room key. Beside the phone in my room sat a brown plastic plaque, which in large white letters listed numbers for security and the concierge - a mile down the road. I tried desperately to dredge an image of the numbers from my memory, but couldn't recall anything other than 3 and 7, and these were hopeful guesses at best. There was a phone in the living area with a printed list of useful numbers but cunningly, security and the concierge were not on that list. Not one of the numbers seemed to consider anyone would lock themselves out of their room. I called building maintenance which just rang out before diverting to some random voicemail system, onto which I recorded my name, condo number and a plaintive message detailing my problem, which was a process I completed for any vaguely suitable number short of the local police. In between these calls I foraged about looking for possible spare keys in cupboards and repeatedly tried the door to see if by some miracle it would open or had somehow failed to close properly. No chance.

My dilemma was needing to get into my room but I was not particularly in any hurry to be rescued wearing just blue y-fronted pants. Although an incredibly small cross section of females have found wrapping themselves around this cuddly torso some kind of nirvana, a recent poll of the girlfriend's children, aged 8 and 11, had unanimously revealed the movie star they considered I bore the greatest resemblance to was Winnie the Pooh, so I generally favour keeping my nakedness to myself. A thorough search of the whole condo revealed the only item that might aid my modesty was a grubby door mat.

The digital display now told me it was 7:10AM, Sunday morning, the beginning of a busy day for Mormons of which I desperately hoped whoever was responsible for checking voicemail was not, although in this part of Americana someone not being a Mormon was very long odds indeed. Faced with the alternative of having to somehow get Amanda to find a spare key and the trauma of living this whole thing down over the remaining years of my servitude to this company, I hoped and waited.

At 7:53AM the temperature in the living area was fast falling for some reason and I couldn't find the control panel anywhere - two days later I would find it downstairs by the front door. Covered in goosebumps and still clouded by my thick cold and heavy chest the events of the day finally caught up with me; the journey itself, US immigration, Alonzo, homeland security, waiting for shop happy locals to get on planes, the surreal world that was Utah and the unexpected trauma of Amanda's love life, the absolute frustration of my situation, my hatred of self locking doors. I snapped - the red mist descended, a switch in the back of my mind fused and the anger bubbled over, lava crested the lip of the volcano and I entered full on eruption mode. With my lips pursed and a set look of absolute determination in my posture, I pushed myself up off the sofa and walked back to the door, gave the knob one last chance to redeem itself, which it did not, and took two steps back while angling my fairly broad left shoulder at roughly the area just above the door lock. Conjuring images of Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon my entire mass propelled itself with the greatest velocity I could muster in two steps. There was an almighty crack of protesting wood as I bounced off the door. After a quick check to make sure none of the cracks came from bones and with increased resolution took the two steps back again and once more hurtled my blue panted torso at the door, which gave out an even louder crack, decimating the frame where the lock had been and flying open beneath the force, coming off one of its hinges in the process. The momentum had taken me stumbling into the room, without breaking stride I turned and stepped back, letting the door know in no uncertain terms who was boss while shuffling it into some semblance of being closed. Turning off the lights I then jumped straight into bed, letting the adrenalin disperse while regulating my breathing, quickly falling into a deep sleep.

The next five days passed without much further ado, or I suppose without much of any equal or greater significance occurring. A call to Amanda later that Sunday found her to be alive and well but not in need of human company, for which I was very grateful. It did seem she was well enough, despite calling in sick for the next four days, to need her hire car each day for shopping - therapy I assumed. Even the smallest American towns are designed with transportation by vehicle in mind and not much thought is ever given to your poor, chest infected pedestrian. As it was, for these four days my wind buffeted form trailed the two miles along the highway to and from the office either side of a days training - the matter of which is of little consequence.

On the Thursday, having succumbed to some rather clever TV advertising I decided to brave the arduous journey to the local mall in order to hunt down the local radio shack. The mall sat on the other side of the highway, on a slight rise like an American version of the medieval Church, surrounded by lush carefully designed grass, proud, looming down omnipresent over the town. The eight lanes of the highway that needed traversing to reach this place of worship came in at just under 100 yards of tarmac, that stretched off in all directions, generally it seemed crossings are only found at junctions. This meant five minutes of waiting for the green walk sign and then 15 seconds with which to bipedal 100 yards with haste to an audience of impatient revving monster trucks. Slightly traumatised but intact despite my chests ongoing dramatics I subsequently trawled around the mall, ate noodles and purchased a number of seldom used gadgets that now get religiously transported much as the blue fobbed key. I also brought a few t-shirts from JC Penney's mostly out of nostalgia for a movie called 'Roadhouse'.

Primarily the week was notable for the written conversation I had with the dwarf like Hispanic house maid that cleaned the condos with a religious passion. The first note I received sat on the kitchen counter on Monday after I returned home: “This is very bad, why you do this? Can you not call security and have them make door open?”

I immediately turned over the sheet of paper and replied after drawing a big arrow that I took time to colour in: “I was locked out and the number for security was in the room!”

I took the trouble of removing the brown plaque from my room and placed it on the kitchen surface alongside the paper so the arrow pointed at the sign.

On Tuesday night I returned to find the plaque returned to its rightful place in my room, the following message sat on the kitchen counter: “Why you not call security? Makes big trouble and much cost for company.”

At this point I admit my 'big ignorant white man' pangs momentarily got the better of me. I of course carried some guilt for my actions but lined up against everything that had proceeded the act and the predicament of the moment, it seemed almost justified. To be honest the more time I spent doing the daily chest infected pilgrimage alongside a highway of behemoth trucks and lorries, and spent each night land locked to the condo for lack of car, the less I really gave a damn. I guess the company needed the $200 saved on car hire to fund the fleet of private executive jets, but I digress. I turned over the paper and wrote for the final time: “I could not get into my room. I could not see the security number. I left a message for maintenance but no one called back. It was Sunday morning!!!”

On Wednesday I returned to the following;

“Very bad, you not ring security and now company have pay $160 for new door.”

I never bothered to reply to that last and nothing more appeared on the kitchenette. It did seem though that my correspondent was curious to see what this bad man looked like, and it was that as I opened the front door on Friday morning I stood looking down at a child sized middle aged woman that may or may not have genetically originated from South America. Her fierce eyes were dark righteous flames that bore into mine, that looked me up and down slowly before imperiously performing some clucking noise by pushing her tongue off the roof of her mouth. Dismissing me she turned to wheel her rattling trolley of detergents, cloth and packaged soaps along the path to a condo that deserved her devoted attention. My return flight was scheduled for the next day, Saturday afternoon and I was really looking forward to it.

Feeling suitably recovered from her weeks ordeal, Amanda arrived on my doorstep Friday night, pale but pristinely dressed. An hour later after two packed restaurants and several complex parking manoeuvers we found ourselves in an Italian, my only requisite being that they sold alcohol – a rarity in Provo. I spent three hours between Bruschetta, Valpolicella and Cannelloni repeating that time honoured process of listening carefully, making insightful comments and never, under any circumstances offering advice. At the end of the evening we confirmed a midday pickup for my 2:30PM flight.

Saturday dawned, long before I woke, but I did – to the sound of my phone vibrating across the dark polished wood of the bedside cabinet. As is the usual course of events for this male, the day started very slowly, gradually building to a frenzy as the allotted time for departure grew near, completing the final run through and tossing anything I had missed in to the suitcase as Amanda rang the bell. Everything was dumped into the back of the car and we headed off down the highway towards the interstate that would take us back north into Salt Lake.

For all the frustrations of my time here there was absolutely no denying the wondrous beauty of the geography, I presume shaped over time by volcano and passing ice ages. Provo itself is built upon the hard rock basin of a twelve mile wide valley that seems pool table flat, the town itself part of a long man made sprawl constructed at the foot of the sheltering, high sloping mountains sat at the east side of the valley, the westerly reaches of the town constrained by the blue mirrored Utah Lake that covers the other half of the basin to the foot of the westerly range of rock. Moving northwards the urban spread crawls alongside the lake, eventually leaving it behind, suburbia and industry merging to saturate the whole basin, occasionally retreating as the mountains weave inwards but always wending towards Salt Lake City. Roadside signs are the only indication that you have actually passed from one town to another along the way. Standing in Provo town square, just off Center St you can turn 360 degrees and see high reaching snow capped mountains in all directions. Seldom have I seen cloud, which means the departing sunlight passes from the layered deep purple and orange skies of the west across the basin and sets, climbing golden up the snow crested peaks, morphing to a dusky red upon the luminous summit long after natural light has been chased from the town and man's street lighting has flickered to illumination, attempting to wash away the dark. It is no wonder that men living at the feet of these rocky ranges feel closer to their gods, you get a sense that some designing hand must have been responsible in constructing something so breathtaking.

So it was, as Saturday morning passed to afternoon we pulled onto the I15 and with the lake glistening to the left and the sentinel mountains tripping along each side we headed towards Salt Lake, via a large shopping mall chosen for its apparent wide range of sporting footwear. Amanda had promised a girlfriend she would acquire them and had presumptuously assumed I would be delighted to carry them home for her - I typically have enough trouble getting me and my own home, let alone anyone else's.

The lack of lifts into work each morning due to her ailing heart and her desire to hold onto the car for the purposes of shopping, had I have to say, left me feeling rather uncharitable. As I waited on her return, sitting in the car outside the mall, I deliberated on the best juncture to inform her that I had enough to be carrying home and would be making my journey sans trainers. My considered conclusion was that this was best left until we arrived at the airport and I had at least one foot on solid concrete.

At just after 1:30PM I stood with both feet on the pavement with my bags spread out around me, the rear of her car disappearing into the horizon. We had come to an amicable conclusion, I would travel with trainers but sans box and wrapping. If trainers did not then fit or were not liked then it was up to them to sort out the rest. With the white, pink frilly trimmed trainers squashed forcibly into my compact case I turned, picked up, hoisted and dragged my bags into the terminal, little aware that McFate had not quite finished with me yet.