Tonight I am on my own. Chrystal moved out to Hampshire last year, Chas is visiting his grandparents in Hastings and Jayne is also in Hastings, helping Frankie move there. This leaves me here in the grip of one of my most persistent fears – locking myself out of the house.

I always worry about having the wind or the dogs slam the front door shut while I am putting out the recycling, or of just fogetting my keys when I go out. I try to remember to keep my keys in my pocket even when I am indoors if I am on my own, and when I go out I check my pocket twice. I know I have a safety net because there are four other keys and I could call Jayne or one of the kids which would be embarrassing and a little inconvenient, but today I would be stuffed. But then I routinely go out without my mobile phone and don’t actually remember anybody’s number, except the house phone.

Now that two of the three kids will be living out of town it is going to be a bigger worry.

I keep meaning to get a spare cut which I could leave in my desk at work – which is close enough that I could go there even if I got locked out in my slippers – but have never got around to it.

A thought occurred to me today: wouldn’t it be great if there was a place where you could lodge a spare key, somewhere with a number that you could easily remember or get through the directory, that was close enough to go to or for somebody to come out to you?

Just imagine; one call to a freefone number via a public phone, answer a few security questions, and within ten minutes somebody on a moped turns up with your key. I think I might be willing to pay for that peace of mind. It would be like having a friend or relative nearby with a spare key except they are guaranteed to be in and not off on holiday or something, and you wouldn’t feel bad calling them in the middle of the night. Perhaps there would be a call-out charge if you ever had to call them out.

Unfortunately it sucks as a business model because I doubt many people are as paranoid about this as I am, and such a business would really be attractive to burglars who could get access to loads of places at once, so this big idea is right up there with my least practical ones.

Maybe I would be better off waiting for doors that can be operated without keys – maybe with fingerprint scanners or retina scanners or something. Or maybe I should just get one of those key boxes that people have when they need in-home care.