Lockdown

I got a fright last week at church. I was coming back to the car after doing a committal of remains, and opened the boot. I dropped my stuff in, and closed the boot lid. And then the panic set in. Was I stuck there? Where had my keys gone?

My wee car is of the type that you can push the button and just the boot opens. There's a separate button to open the driver's door. The problem is that if you were to only open the boot, drop your keys in, when the boot closes, the keys are locked inside, and no way of opening the car.

It would be worse, of course, because my house keys were on the same keyring, so not only would I not be able to drive anywhere, but I couldn't even get back into the house to get the spare key. Well and truly stuck.

It reminded me of the time when a minister colleague would park his car in a Dublin city centre car park for a quick getaway up the road to the north when classes finished on a Thursday or Friday. Apart from that one day, when he locked his keys in the car and spent the rest of the day getting a bus home, then returning on the bus with his spare key, before driving north again.

What would I do now? No keys, no hope. Perhaps I should phone someone - living in a church-owned house means that someone is bound to have a spare key lying around. And as I lifted my right hand which held my phone, what did I find, but my car keys, thankfully not in the boot, locked away, but free and able to open the car and let me drive away.

Yes, I am an eejit!