7953/20894
Eleven days ago I had an idea for a new game show. Today I went into London for a meeting about it, which went pretty well. We're going to try and develop it some more, but there's the possible kernel of something fun in there. If you've followed my blog for 22 years or my career for 35 years you will know that hardly anything ever gets off the ground and gets made, but it's still an impressive start. Not quite as impressive as the time I came up with a sitcom in the lobby of Channel 4, pitched it ten minutes later and got an immediate script commission (
you can read about that here), but still.
As a writer/creative person you never know when an idea might strike. It's good to see the brain can still work a little bit. Just when I thought I was out, they dragged me back in.
And then, when the idea didn't quite have the legs, they pushed me back out again.
I haven't exactly been idle whilst living in the countryside, but I do think getting slightly more into the thick of things will get the brain juices running a little bit more. It's been a seven year long lockdown and being locked down can create some comedy (stone clearing and Twitch of Fun are clear products of imprisonment), but maybe I can have a few more shots at getting something made for TV before I die.
I got home and decided to empty out my antique bureau ahead of the move. I bought this back in 2018 and it's one of the only nice things I have. When it was delivered (and I can't find a blog about this, but MUST have written about it surely) it lasted about 20 minutes before Smithers (our cat) decided to jump up on to it, lost his footing and fell down the front of it, scratching it all the way down.
I was heartbroken, but I can not be allowed nice things. As luck would have it something was wrong with the furniture - can't quite remember what, maybe a drawer wouldn't open- so the place I'd got it from had to take it back to fix and they very kindly repaired the cat damage. And luckily Smithers never tried to get back up on it again. The fucking idiot. I am glad he's dead.
I had decided I was going to put the bureau in my office in the new house and use it to write at (which I haven't done previously) and was quite excited about this prospect.
Anyway, the bureau came with two keys and once I'd emptied all the stuff out of it I thought I'd lock it up so that it would be easier to transport. The keys were in a small drawer in the main writing desk part. I took one out, tried it in the lock of the top bit and it successfully locked. So I'd worked out which key was which.
Except when I came to unlock the lid so I could get the other key, the key no longer worked. It had locked the lock but could not open the lock. I tried it in the drawers and realised this was the key for them and the key for the lid was helpfully locked inside the desk that it opened.
It's the 18th Century equivalent of locking your keys in the car.
Why hadn't I taken out both keys just in case? To be fair you're not really expecting a key to work one way and not the other, but I was really annoyed about my stupidity.
I know that this is solvable and that someone out there will be able to pick the lock (and most likely if I can find a key that is anything like the real one, it will probably open), but it's still the kind of thing that really upsets me. I am frustrated by my own foolish behaviour, coupled with my inability to do anything practical. I did watch a youtube video about picking locks like this, but it made no kind of sense to me.
It maybe says something about how cushy my life if (I mean the fact I have an antique bureau at all clearly suggests this), but this kind of thing really ruins my day and preys on my mind. It's not quite as tragic as the day one cat scratch and is more easily corrected (but still not without some expense and inconvenience).
It's the embarrassment about my own incompetence that mortifies me. Obviously it will be resolved at some point but I am annoyed at what I've done. I just thank my luck that I had cleared almost everything out of there, as all our important documents were in there just minutes before my error.
I probably can't even get a stand up routine out of it. "You know what it's like when you lock your bureau key in your bureau..."
Look at it though. It's a lovely bureau. A lovely useless bureau.
Someone will know how to get into it.
