Keeping Safe

Something as simple as a jammed lock was the source of today's excitement in sweltering Swanvale Halt. I came down to begin setting up for the baptism (unusual to have one on a Saturday) and found Rick the verger apologetic: he couldn't get the safe open. Neither could I, nor the spare keys in the office. This wasn't too serious as far as the baptism was concerned: the only thing we needed from the safe was the old baptismal shell, a lovely thing of silver and mother-of-pearl, but not necessary. I used my hand to douse the children, a three-year-old whose baptism was originally scheduled for Spring 2020 and his baby sister, and apologised it was less pretty than the usual option. That was all right, but communion tomorrow would be harder work. Would we be able to borrow some silverware from Tophill or Hornington, or use glass - not the easiest option?

I thought I'd better warn Gordon the head server and Jean the sacristan. Jean's husband turned up as the baptism was drawing to a close with her keys, and they turned in the lock with no trouble. As soon as he was gone, musing that with this magical ability he had better head to a bank somewhere and see what he could manage there, it jammed again. This time after much fiddling I could hear the mechanism clank and the door opened, and an application of the panacea of WD40 seems to have allowed the key to turn happily. Can it really be that simple?

Our safe is old, and so are some of the keys. As is the manner with old locks, sometimes the original keys, worn and smoothed in the same way as the lock, work better than their sharp and shiny modern copies. But it's disconcerting to realise how inconvenient it would be to have our kit shut away and inaccessible. Should we have a backup set somewhere? This suddenly seems more likely than it did this morning.

UPDATE: 'Never put WD40 in locks!' says Sally our Office Manager. 'We've got some graphite spray for that!' - apparently bought by former curate Marion some years ago. Why has nobody told me this until now? Not that Sally can find it.