The other bad news is that an unbelievably idiotic cylinder design became a European standard (the “Euro” profile cylinder).

The good news is that lock manufacturers have been spurred into creating some truly fearsome high-security locks, dealing with lock pickers and earlier idiotic lock designers.

The bad news is that it won’t be any good calling a locksmith to get you in if you’ve lost your keys to one of the next generation of locks. So if you do fit high-security locks give a spare key to a good friend who never goes out and never goes on holiday.

If you have two safes and are determined to put your spare keys in a safe, at least consider putting the spare for one inside the other. That way there’s at least a chance that when you lose or break one safe’s only living key, you have a working key to the safe where the spare is stored.

As you’ll guess, yesterday I attended a safe where “the key’s inside”. I don’t really mind as it’s all work of course. However, I wanted an example of this particular lock, and was a mite peeved that there was no need to put a replacement lock in.