Cold and wet

I happened to notice this striking damage to the surface of the road walking in East Street yesterday, in cold bright weather. With it so happening that I cycled over it this morning, in cold wet weather. As it turned out, the road surface was badly damaged over quite a stretch, with some of the holes being quite a hazard for the careless or unlucky cyclist. And this on a main road from London to the south coast, signposted from important junctions like the Elephant & Castle.

Furthermore, I had quite forgotten what it was like to cycle in bad weather in a yellow oil-cloth cycling cape, spectacles fogging up and all. An experience which not many people can be familiar with, as thinking about it now I cannot remember when I last saw anyone wearing one. Not something the spandex brigade go in for.

The occasion being the mortise lock on our back door more or less giving out this morning after twenty years or more service. We were fearful that this was going to be rather a pain, as this particular lock package - a mortise lock with cylinder and door furniture for one door plus with what Yale now call a traditional night latch for another - with both locks working on the same key - does not seem to be available any more.

However, I thought of the people on the by-pass from whom I had bought our entirely satisfactory key box and pedalled off there, it being a bit far to walk by then. Rather to my surprise they were able to supply a replacement cylinder for the mortice lock and cut three additional keys in what seemed like seconds. Replacement cylinder fitted and back door furniture reassembled in minutes. A lot fewer minutes than it had taken to take it apart in the first place, it having been a while since I had had occasion to do such a thing.

Bonuses to all this being that we now have top and bottom bolts to the back door, we have sorted out our spare key container and we have sorted out my box of miscellaneous ironmongery in the garage. Some of which last has been sitting in this very box for more than thirty years, just in case. The very box which used to hold the shoe cleaning equipment when I was a child. That is to say the olden days, before trainers were invented, and respectable people polished their shoes every morning before they set off for work.

PS 1: also a box which appeared to have been home or stash to a mouse at some stage, with rather a lot of husks of sunflower seeds turning up in the bottom of one of its three compartments.

PS 2: at some point during the night following, that is to say last night, I remembered, rather vaguely, about having taken the back door off its hinges, a rather more serious operation than fiddling with the lock. This taking off has now been run to ground at reference 4. I wonder whether I would attempt such a thing now, four years later? Or would I phone up our builder, who, as it happens, is carpentry trained? And then, looking again at the picture of the door off its hinges, I remember that the bench in front of it was made with timber discarded by the shuttering carpenters working on what was to be the new Croydon Art College, somewhere near East Croydon railway station, and where I worked the second summer holiday of my time at university, maybe half a century ago now.

Reference 1: PES (Southern) Ltd – Epsom Locksmiths - 4 Castle Parade, Ewell By Pass, KT17 2PR, Epsom.

Reference 2: http://pessouthern.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.yale.co.uk/en/yale/couk/.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/who-dares-wins.html.