As Safe as Houses

Departure Day minus One. The day to do all those outstanding tasks before three weeks away. Sort out supply lines for the guinea pigs. Pay staff. Buy presents. Check the time of the flight. Pack. Step one, locate the cheque book.  In the safe of course. Open the safe..... and this is where the Germanic, ordered day went Mexican.

I can't open the safe. It fails to make its reassuring peep when the code number is tapped in. The light is still glowing but the door won't open. It doesn't have a cardigan stuck in it (as has happened before). Nothing else looks wrong. It just won't budge.

40 minutes later it still won't budge. I've done that pincode thing where you change a * for a #. And then back again. Nothing.

The safe has everything in it. Passports. Ticket. Cashcards. Cheque books. Carhire details. We won't be getting on a cut-price non-refundable absolutely no changes permitted flight without it. Arrrgggggh.  How do you break into a safe?

D's employer supplied the safe before I moved to Kenya. But most of his colleagues are on leave and no one's heard anything of a key for emergencies.  I can't even find a keyhole, so I'm not pushing too hard on this anyway. Or WAS there a key, and we locked it into the safe? No idea at all as panic sets in.

Two hours in, someone finds the number of a safebreaking company. Who aren't picking up the phone. But I persist and 30 minutes later, yes, a competent sounding woman promises their chief safebreakers will come. 'And also repair it afterwards?' I clarify.  Yes, yes, all in hand.

And once the angels of mercy have broken in, have changed the mechanism, have rescued the travel documents I am nearly calm enough to have a conversation. 
- 'What was the problem?  Had we done something wrong?' 
- 'Oh memory failure due to power surges' said the engineer confidently. 
Sounded good. Except it doesn't have an external power source, so how can power surges affect it? And isn't the point of a safe to be reliable? Infallible? Safe,

Too many questions.  Au revoir.