WHEN YOU WERE 18, you used to be given the keys to the house. Nowadays, this is the age when your parents are most likely to change the locks.
In the dish at home that sits in the drawer full of rubbish in your kitchen, there will be a selection of mystery, unlabelled keys. If you really want to know what they unlock, throw them all away, and in a matter of hours, you will find out.
Carrying a bunch of keys has always been a bit of a nightmare unless you carry a handbag or you’re a Beefeater or both. That’s why people with expensive suits like to holster up their keys in a little leather pouchette. However, be aware that the best way of signalling to your partner that it’s time to leave a dull party is to jangle your keys in an imminent departure kind of way, and you can’t jangle a little leather pouchette.
The greatest fear of people who live by themselves is that they will leave the house without their keys. That’s why the first thing they do when they’ve closed the door behind them is to check for their keys. Alternatively, they leave their keys with a neighbour who can be trusted. The golden rule here is, if your neighbour doesn’t immediately entrust you with their keys in return, then they are not to be trusted.
Many people choose to hide their keys. The top places are under the mat, under the rubbish bin or in a place so secure that you’ve completely wiped it from your memory. Some people like to carry their bunch of keys on their belt loop. The reason for this is that the one thing you’re least likely to forget when you walk out of the house is your trousers.
Everyone has a few big old shed keys with one tooth, which all look interchangeable but aren’t. The reason why the key that looks remarkably like your shed key doesn’t unlock the shed is because the key that is your shed key doesn’t open the shed either. The whole point of keys is that no two keys are the same; that’s why it’s foolish of you to expect that the key you got copied from your front door key will actually open your front door.
One day, keys may be replaced by smart cards, but not until the cards are smart enough to get themselves into your back pocket when you’ve just strode out of the house without them. Biometrics will mean the end of all keys, smart or stupid. You’ll simply roll up to your house, shout ‘it’s me’, and the lock will completely ignore you like your girlfriend would in a similar situation.
© GUY BROWNING IS THE AUTHOR OF ‘NEVER PUSH WHEN IT SAYS PULL’ AND CREATOR OF ‘TORTOISE IN LOVE’ (DVD) – USED BY PERMISSION.
