KEYS OF STUPIDITY

I’ll admit it was a hot, sticky, distracted kind of a day, and that I probably wasn’t at my best after having felt just a tad ratty over the weekend, and then not having slept well overnight in the prelude to another working week, but my lack of concentration in the evening really was pretty unforgivable and I started to make mistakes big style, especially after the adrenaline rush of dealing with a whole host of idiot drivers as I made my way homewards.

But that’s a story for another time, if I can be bothered sharing something else so banal with you, especially as, no matter how much I complain about that sort of stuff, nothing ever really changes and anyway, nobody actually got hurt so it’s probably not worth dwelling on.

I stopped off on the way home to pick up my prescription, tapping my foot and studying the floor intently as yet another of my “time-saving” visits seemed to take far longer than it was promised it would when the “we’ll sort it all out for you” promise was first offered as a service all those months ago. Once again, cometh the moment, there was a huge queue and nobody much in evidence behind the till precisely at the moment when I “quickly popped in” because I had “a moment” in which to do so…

Nevertheless, eventually I was handed my bag of life-giving tablets and I then headed homewards on a lovely sunny day, sunglasses perched upon my nose and my incongruous jacket still stubbornly being worn.

So anyway, I got home and I opened up the front door and went inside, allowing it to slam lock on the Yale, but not deadlocking it, as I knew that I was due to go out later. I put down my bag, took off my jacket and sorted out the mail and placed it down on the cooker, along with my phone as I was expecting a message with regard to an email I’d sent just before leaving work.

I then realised that I still had my sunglasses on, so I went over to where my jacket was hanging, which was when I first noticed that my normal glasses in their case had fallen out of my pocket somewhere.

“Damn!” I thought, “more time wasted…”

So I went over to my jacket, grabbed the car keys and another bunch of keys from the pocket, rather “cleverly” decided against putting my jacket on again, and went out through the front door which, as you know, hadn’t been deadlocked and so didn’t need unlocking to get out of.

I strolled down to the car, stepping onto the roadway to let a jogger run by unimpeded (I’m rather nice like that, you see… and which is proof that karma is a load of old toss...) all the time hoping that the glasses case would be inside the car and so not necessitate a trip back to the pharmacy to see if I’d dropped it outside, or, even worse, driving back to work to collect them from my desk which was where I’d last seen them.

I opened the back door and there was no sign of them where they would normally fall if I left my jacket side pocket unzipped.

I swore, and closed the back door, and then was rather pleased to find that they had actually fallen out onto the front seat, presumably as I’d been climbing out of the car earlier, so I opened the passenger door, reached in and picked them up, happy that a frantic “search and rescue” mission had been averted.

This was when I noticed that the bunch of keys which I’d taken out of my jacket pocket were the office keys and not the house keys.

No house keys.

No phone.

No wallet.

Not even a book to read sitting on the bench outside the house.

Then I realised that without a phone I couldn’t even be contacted to be told which train I had to meet, or indeed ring to find out whether another set of keys were actually likely to be in transit anytime soon.

It really is the simplest of things that can most bugger up your entire day, isn’t it…?