Key This? Graf That

The year has almost played out and if you're like me, you've just about had it with 2005. The days between Christmas and getting back to work in earnest after the New Year are liminal time-out-of-time days where I just can't bring myself to commit to the daily grind as usual. My head is in a different place and I find myself doing things that I'd not do otherwise. Things like washing my collection of colorful old bottles shaped like banjos and fiddles, which occupy the sunny sill of a long bay window at Clog House Est. 1935, or dusting off my Silvestri accordion.

For this season's betwixt-and-between days I hied me to the hardware store and purchased a tube of powdered graphite and goosed all the locks around the place with the stuff - cars, house, shed, bicycles, toolboxes. I daresay the pleasure derived from feeling a key opening the silky innards of a well-lubed lock exceeds that of even, well, replacing a toilet flapper and fixing that leak that causes the commode to heave a dismayed sigh at annoying intervals.