There was a time when if a door was locked you opened it with something like this. Perhaps it is a little exaggerated. This was in the good olde days when people had only keys to the lock up. I can imagine the big double key here was for the castle main door and the others for the normal home.
My mum’s key to the door was something like the third one up from the bottom. Much more handy, you could put it in a purse and just a quick turn in the door: you were in. Unfortunately those keys with the quick turn were not found to be pratical, especially as many unwanted crooks were able to also do a quicke turn in the lock and enter. We were never robbed and no-one tried to break open the door. One glance at our door in Bethnal Green in the East End of London,  and it was obvious that we had nothing worth taking. We would probably have been glad if they had taken something. At least we might have got compensation, which was probably worth more than they had taken. The doors inside our home had no keys. I think they might have had keys in 1884 when the house was built, who knows. We never needed to lock doors inside the house, you just shut the door if it fitted. That was another problem we had, the doors did not fit into the frame. There had been so much vibrational work done from the bombings in World War 2, that if you had a key to an inside door it would not fit.

Today things are different, you have locks and keys on all the doors, even on some of the windows. My key chain now looks like this and there is even a sort of metal block attached. This is not for decoration. If I lost my keys and someone found them, he can throw them into the nearest letter box. They are then automatically sent to a certain place and I will get them returned, all in the name of security. Of couse, I would not know if someone had copied my keys in the meanwhile. Furthermore, my keys are mine and registered. Unfortunately if I did lose them and they were stolen, I would be obliged to pay and replace all the keys in my house (all 13 sets), as we all have a master key which is also our door key, but not everyone has the same door key. This is geting complicated. To add to the problem, if someone rings our doorbell, I can look through a peephole in the door to see who is there, but if you do not see anyone, it means they are waiting outside by the main door. Now it gets difficult, at least for me. Mr. Swiss finds it ideal, but I do not. I have a sort of intercom inside the appartment. I can press a button and then the person waiting can talk to me from outside where he is waiting. I do not like speaking to anonymous people, I like to see their faces and we do not have visual contact. I then go to the main door, we live in the ground floor appartment.

Mr. Swiss: where are you going?”

Me: to the main door to see who is there.”

Mr. Swiss: “You just have to press the button and speak.”

Yes, life is so easy today.I sometimes wish we were back to the good old days with the key selection in the first picture.

Of course, we can also be locked out of our computer, especially if you forget which password you need to enter. I am quite well organised now, I have written them all down and registered them in my computer. I can see you shaking your heads and trying to surpress a laugh. If a hacker cracks Mrs. Angloswiss computer, he will have all her passwords. No, I am sly at the same time. I have my passwords on a stick that is kept in a safe place that no-one knows. I am very devious, in the safe place I keep all my sticks, about 4 of them, so if someone finds them they might try, but three are decoys and only one is genuine. Of course I print all my passwords out. Writing from a stick is complicated and  would have to connect it to my computer to be able to read it.

I know, someone could find my list, so what am I supposed to do? It is a vicious circle, so in the end you just have to hope. I used to have them on my iPhone, but Mr. Swiss found that was not sensible, especially if I lost my iPhone. You just cannot win today, can you.

Somehow I think in the olden days it was easier. The were attached to your belt, if you were a man. I do not know where the ladies put them, but I think the ladies were not allowed to have the keys, it was a man thing. They would probably have lost them in any case.

I remember once I wanted to open my car door and the key was blocked. This was in the days when it was not steered by remote. After five minutes I realised I would trying to open the neighbours car, because he happened to have the same model and colour, such a coicidence. Ok, Ok, I am now going, I have better things to do, like putting my keys back where they belong after taking a photo.

Daily Prompt: Locked