Something I've forgotten...

Wallet? Check. Phone? Check. Oyster card? Check. Off I maraud into the great big toy box of the world.

What more do you need to explore the turbulent city than a sensible pair of trainers and a sense of adventure? Oh, yeah: you need your keys.

My weekly meet with two friends was smattered with conjecture on what goes through your head when you forget your keys. Do you assume it will be as easy to get into your deadlocked and retina-scanning door as it was to get out? Do you, not content with the initiative test of the commute to work, plan on an elaborate break-in, using nothing more than a paper clip and a Tesco clubcard? Are you trying to irk your gassy flatmate into moving out?

What goes through your head? The answer is as curt as it is problematic: nothing.

Taking your belongings with you is a mechanical response, so practiced and repeated that it becomes deeply embedded in the subconscious. You don't need to think about it, your body ensures it gets done. It's easier to leave the house without wearing trousers, as you need to activate and direct your conscious in order to clad your milk-white thighs.

It isn't your fault if you don't remember to bring your keys. In quotidian reality, no one remembers; the manual action of picking them up is somnolent.

All this, of course, comes as little comfort when you've forgotten the blasted things.

I had just finished laughing at friend A's tale of how his parents refused to let him in the house after he had left his keys in a different pair of jeans, when friend B's usual mouldy yoghurt complexion dipped another shade. He had left his keys in his house.

(Mildly pedantic aside: when people say "Balls, I've forgotten my keys," they haven't. They've remembered them. They probably forgot them several hours ago.)

"How can you forget your keys?" I cried in indignation. He cried in humiliation.

The fact that twenty minutes later he was back, up one set of keys but down a window and any hope of a cordial relationship with Mrs Atkinson from flat 4, was of little consequence to me.

But yesterday, amid celebratory drinks, it happened.

I remembered my keys. They were in my bag, snugly locked inside my office.

It's never the inconvenience that gets to me (as it does the neighbours,) it's the sheer confidence-shattering embarrassment of how perfectly vacant my head can be.

If my body neglected to shift my hairy, floor-scraping knuckles into my bag to forage for my keys, what else am I not doing? Do I ever forget to breath? Drink water?


The one quantum of insufficient solace comes in my friends proving I am not alone in these helium-headed moments. It must happen to everyone at some low and humiliating point in their lives, even locksmiths.