The god of small things – keys in this case.

I am quite good at planning things; both my occupations (IT and music) require meticulous preparation and project management and I have learnt from both professions how important these are. Good preparation does not stop things going wrong of course, and part of good planning is having things in place to cope when the inevitable cock-up surfaces.

The potential for things going wrong is in direct proportion to the number of people involved in a project and to their experience in doing what they have to do. Opera has an implausibly large number of people involved, far too many to make sense, it shouldn’t really work at all. I try to explain how different conducting opera is from conducting symphonic music with a little story that happened to me a few years ago. It was I think a performance of “The Tales of Hoffmann”, a tricky opera by any measure you care to choose, there is a lot of action, the music is constantly changing, and the characterisation is strong (which leads to singers getting carried away!). During a difficult bit of recitative one singer exclaimed an “Oh” where there was none in the score, this is never a good sign! I looked up to find him bent almost double under another character’s arm. His wig had somehow got caught in the other character’s button, or cuff link, or somesuch, and he was trying to extricate himself. His position rendered him completely incapable of singing so I stopped beating and held the orchestra in a pause where none was written in the score. A good opera orchestra will react to this, hold the pause without question, and continue when directed. Fortunately I had fixed a good orchestra for this production and that is exactly what they did. The principals on stage dis-entangled themselves after a few moments and the performance continued. It should be noted that although I was looking at the stage, waiting for the magic moment to arrive when I could continue, the orchestra were all looking at me, not the stage. This is a small but crucial detail, as they needed my direction to start again, not the stage’s. Such a problem is unlikely to occur during a performance of a symphony. There is a lot to go wrong in opera.

In fact little that I do is as complex as opera. Preparation can often take more than a year providing I have that much notice. It is also a great deal easier to conduct an opera one has already done. This may seem obvious, indeed it is obvious, but it still needs to be said. There are several pieces I would love to do again simply because having done them once I now know what to do!

So, I am now brought to the story I have to tell, the small matter of keys. I like keys, I do have a lot of them and I organize them carefully on my key-ring. I can tell anyone who asks exactly what each one does. I am the exact opposite of my wife whose key-ring is a complete mess and I have no idea of how she finds her way around her keys, or anything else for that matter. I can find my front door key in the dark, when we arrive home late at night together there is never any point in asking her to unlock the door.

I have an elderly relative who lives in London in a house which is owned by a trust of which I am a trustee. The house has been in the family for a very long time and I know it well. My relative has lived there all his life and shared it with his sister until she died. The house has always been as cold as iron in the winter, so I set about seeing if I could get a grant for central heating to be installed. My relative is in his seventies so I set about researching and found a body that might give a grant for heating. Little did I know the saga on which I was to embark, I made literally hundreds of phone calls to get and keep this project going. It was with a curious sense of elation that I welcomed the engineers to start work a short while ago, I had almost convinced myself that the bureaucracy would beat me, it was most satisfying that work was actually starting.

Several other more trivial things had come to a head at more or less the same time as this. We have a small house in France, there had been storms there and our roof is old and fragile and in need of replacement, I needed to go over and check it. My car was due for a service and I wanted this done before I went as the trip would take me substantially over the mileage when a service would be due.

There was also the less trivial matter of a client who had re-arranged an important meeting for the morning of the last day of the scheduled heating installation.

Lastly, and this is significant, and I should have paid more attention to it, my relative was ill and in hospital during for the period of installation, in some ways this would be helpful as he would be spared the noise and disruption to his life during the work, but I was anxious that his health was starting to deteriorate.

I could see the disaster looming, so I knew I would need my best “attention-to-detail” hat on to get all this together.

So, the plan was: I would ask my relative’s next-door-neighbour whom I knew had a back door key to open up the house for the engineers, I would take my car to Crawley for its service, hop on the train from Three Bridges to Reigate (change at Redhill) for my important meeting with my client, take the train back to Three Bridges, pick up the car, drive to London to check that the installation was going well and finished up properly, spend the evening at the house checking it all worked, drive home, get up at 4 in the morning to catch the early Eurotunnel to France and onward to our house for its checkup. Everything would fit together perfectly. Of course it was all too good to be true, I should have seen that wig and that button inevitably coming together. But I had checks in place, the neighbour had been feeding my relative’s cat whilst he was in hospital so I knew her keys worked, the neighbour had called my mobile on more than one occasion to discuss another matter so I knew she had my number.

The day came and started well, I dropped child No. 4 off at the station to go to school without problem, arrived at the garage half an hour before it opened but still managed to drop the car off without a problem. The trains all worked perfectly so I found myself in Reigate for my meeting about an hour early. There was time for a Latté and cake at Café Nero and a few minutes revision before my presentation. I checked it all over, made a few changes, and saw I still had twenty minutes before the meeting. Should I check my email? No, my other clients were quiet at present, there was no need. But I have a 3G mobile broadband dongle, and being a bloke I don’t need much encouragement to play with toys, so I plugged it in, fired it up and checked my email.

There it was, an email from my relatve's neighbour to say her keys didn’t work and the engineers could not get in to the house to finish the job. What’s worse, some joker had deduced that the key wouldn’t work because there was another key in the lock inside the house, this prevents a key from working on the outside. The solution would be to take a hammer, give the outside key a sharpish blow which would dislodge the inside key allowing the outside key to turn and give access. Of course this would work! As it happens on this occasion, the god of small things decided that the hammered key would jam in the lock, rendering it impossible to either turn or withdraw it. Then a different bright spark tried to extricate the key with some pliers, breaking it in half leaving a portion inside the barrel completely incapable of being withdrawn.

I paused to reflect for a moment, the solution was obvious - mass annihilation of all Central Heating Engineers. Or... perhaps the use of a front door key. I had one on my key ring, but this was with me in Reigate when it was needed in London. I could run it over after my meeting, but I would have to collect my car first, this delay would probably mean that the installation would not be finished today and I would have to delay my trip to France. Even if I cancelled my important meeting with the client the situation would not be improved much, and my client would be annoyed. This would not be good.

Now, if you have come with me this far you will remember that I like keys. It is always my habit to have a spare set of keys around in case they are needed. I did indeed have a spare set of keys, but they were at home in the key box. To get them to London I would have to ask (I shudder when I remember it) The Wife to run them over. Marriage is a complicated thing; often it resembles a competitive sport, if I were going to ask this favour there would be a price to pay.

Given the circumstances I thought I would give it a try. I called The Wife and explained the situation. There was, as is usual, a bit of grumping but after some smooth talking she agreed to do it. I called the engineers (who had left to do another job) and let them know a key was on the way, and with fingers firmly crossed left for my meeting.

The meeting with my client went well and achieved what I had wanted from it. Afterwards I got the train back to the garage, picked up my car and drove to London. By the time I arrived the engineers had finished the installation and were making good, the broken lock had been disassembled to reveal a standard lock barrel which was easily replaced from the local DIY store. I confirmed that with this type of barrel having a key in the lock inside really does prevent a key from being inserted outside. I didn’t try to replicate the trick with the hammer though.

I still don’t know what price will have to be paid for getting the key to London, but there will be one, and it will be high. Even so the pleasure I felt in getting the problem sorted, and the satisfaction from feeling the iron cold house start to warm up with the heating will outweigh it. Overall, I was satisfied that the day had worked and the problems thrown up had been overcome; if you'll pardon the pun, the key was preparation.

Life is sometimes almost as complicated as opera.