As I rushed to stuff
my pockets on my return to the nick from home leave, it struck me that the more
freedom I had, then
the more keys I have to carry.
Back in Closed prison we may have one or two keys, for a locker and a
courtesy lock, at most. Now I have those two keys, plus a locker at work, then
my house key, and am an occasional custodian of the car keys.
I was unconsciously assuming that "freedom" implied an absence
of locks. Wrong. It means that I have the keys to even more locks than I could
have imagined.
A quick audit on my everyday keyring shows nineteen identifiable keys and, even worse, a further three which a nagging memory says were/are important but cannot be identified...........
ReplyDeleteProbably not a record, but there is not one key on there I can afford to leave at home when I go out....
In one of George Elliots novels, "Mill on the Floss", she describes someones demise in fortune, part of the description referred to their 'much reduced bunch of keys'; a fitting analysis of social mobility.
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