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I had more or less given up on ever opening my bureau desk top again. Earlier in the week I'd attempted to make a replica key using the drawer key with some cardboard stuck to it with brown tape. Weirdly this didn't work. The cardboard just came off inside the lock. So then I tried the same idea but using plastic instead, because plastic is more solid.
Surprisingly the exact same thing happened and the plastic became lodged in the lock. I suspected I was making things worse.
I wasn't sure a traditional locksmith would get this lock open - all the youtube videos I watched about picking locks were for a different set up and my more traditional attempts at lock picking thus led nowhere. I had emailed the antiques place that I'd got the bureau from but had no response. At the weekend I'd tried again via a more general email address and yesterday a man rang and asked if I still needed help.
He came round this afternoon in his jag. Which I think are issued to all antiques guys when they start up. They're all basically Lovejoy.
He had a look at the lock and at the drawer key and a skellington key I'd bought on Amazon (that maybe opened a skellington but just spun around in the lock). He didn't seem too optimistic and was a bit confused by the plastic and cardboard that was in he lock. I blamed the kids.
I assumed he'd have a lock picking kit or some special key or some other way in, but all he had was a tin full of keys and bench and a grinding tool. All he could do was find the key that was closest to opening it and then gradually grind it down in the hope of getting the lock to work. To complicate things he suspected that when I'd locked it with the wrong key, I had probably left the lock half open and half locked and thus the mechanism was in the wrong place.
My dreams of writing a novel at that desk were in ruins. But to be fair, that wasn't going to happen even if the desk got opened. I was pretty certain I'd fucked everything,
He didn't give in though. He worked away at one of the keys for half an hour, trudging up and down the stairs to test it. Just when I thought there was no hope he came down, jangling his tin of keys. "Have you done it?" I asked.
He nodded with a smile. The key maraca had been his celebration. We were in.
I told him I would never lock the bureau again (and I won't) and in fact the original key which we recovered from its drawer no longer works anyway.
I asked him if he'd bill me and he said that there was nowhere to bill. He had given up a day of his holiday to come and have a look as he said no one else in the workshop wanted to do it (they probably remembered me as the guy who'd had the bureau an hour before his cat fell off it and scratched all the veneer). He only asked for his petrol and an extra tenner for his time. It was utterly insanely kind of him.
He was an angel, sent so that I might think about writing something, but fail to write anything.
An angel who nearly left his portable workbench behind, so then I'd have been really up on the deal but I dashed out and caught him before he left.
I know you guys have been worrying about my antique bureau, so very happy to put your minds at rest.
But just to keep the disasters coming, the flush in our brand new toilet stopped working. So there's something else for you to fret about. We have another toilet, but still. Is there anyone on this earth more worthy of your sympathy than I?
RHLSTP with The Exploding Heads is now out wherever you may pod.
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Tickets for James Acaster on 14th October are selling fast. And just announced Nish Kumar will be my guest on 4th November.
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