2003-03-10 - 12:29 p.m.

I locked myself out of the house last week. Granted it was more to do with a lock that seemed to have a mind of its own, and would doubtless get the leading role should anyone ever decide to make the lock equivalent of the film �Herbie Goes Bananas�, but you do feel like someone with the cerebral capacity of a squeezed lemon nonetheless. To compound matters, I�d been running around the park trying to stave off the chances of having a cardiac arrest on this mountain biking feature I have to write in a week or so, and had nothing on me in the way of phones, money, though quite a lot on me in the way of inappropriately baggy shorts. Luckily, my old housemate was in, so I summoned the services of a locksmith. Now there�s a trade you can�t go wrong in. You turn up, your customer is already feeling like a bit of a low watt bulb, they�re desperate to get into their houses and will pay you through the nose for the privilege. And all for what�s in essence being able to break and enter. I�m quite attracted to it as a profession.

Anyway, I meet our man at the step some time later, make my shamed-faced apologies and direct him to the door in question. He gets out his equipment and it�s at this point that I realise he isn�t quite the deft operative you might expect. To knock off the latch, he produces some kind of bendy pointing device, which he jams through the letterbox with all the grace of a rhino making a patchwork quilt. Then he starts to shake uncontrollably and I�m sure more by luck than judgement manages to flip the latch. I then ask him if he can mend the lock, so he takes it off with a drill and opens it up on the table. Now, I figure locks are sturdy but their mechanisms are delicate and precise � this guy goes in with screwdrivers and his hands shaking like he�s trying to control hydraulic tunnelling equipment. Screws and bits of metal are flying everywhere. Without wanting to be cruel, it�s like watching Michael J Fox trying to put together the inside of a wristwatch. Eventually he somehow jams it together, drops his toolbox a few times for good measure and toodles off, seventy quid the richer. I�m assuming his nickname ain�t Cool Hand Luke, and if Steady Eddie can make a living out of it, there must be room for new blood?