Lost & Found

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As I think I've mentioned before, about seventeen or eighteen years ago, I freelanced for  a few months for a company in Bangor, which entailed much European travel as a consequence. The first solo trip I did for them was to attend a conference in Lisbon, although I remember nothing about the conference or its purpose, but everything about the bar around the corner from my hotel where I ate my meals, drank copious espresso coffee and partook of the rather good, cheap red wine on offer. The roast suckling pig was exquisite and very cheap.

My missing memory of the actual purpose of that visit and its location bring me to two things that have happened today: both involving locks. A couple of weeks ago, the key to our studio (also to the garden shed - same crude lock!) went missing, nowhere to be found. Secondly, today I bought a new padlock for the gate to our parking-space as the current one is rusted solid, having been sorely neglected by my good self over the past couple of winters. Mea culpa.

Now - the replacement lock is of the keyless, combination variety, that would logically obviate the easily lost, as in the case of the studio lock, key. However, on return home from the hardware store, the lock proved aloof from the code it was supplied with, refusing point-blank to open. Not a big deal as I'll just return it to the store for replacement: neither too, was the studio key a problem - in point of fact, you can open those locks with a bit of wire coat hanger.

Which brings me to the point of this triviality. Born in Lisbon on 15th August 1195, Fernando Martins de Bulhões, became, via a circuitous, and it has to be said a rather short life's route, St. Anthony of Padua: both beatified and canonized in 1232 by Pope Gregory IX. He died at the age of 35 in 1231. Today he is remembered by most as the patron saint of lost things, a prayer to whom is said to lead to the rediscovery of mislaid articles.

In the case of the studio key, that small votive muttering seems to have done a few turns round the block before giving forth the fruits of its aspiration. Today, a neighbour of ours offered to take some of our rubbish to the local tip. We gave him some large cardboard packing cases that were taking up space in the studio; thanked him and said goodbye. Ten minutes later, he returned with the studio key in hand, having found it lodged in some of the packing we had given him for the tip. St. Anthony took his time over that one, but I suspect that it might be completely fruitless waiting for guidance on the errant combination lock: back to B&Q it is then, lock and receipt in hand.

 

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