The Yellow Pages is full of ads for 24 hour locksmiths, all promising 1 hour response, no call out charge, etc. etc.
Fucking liars. All of them.
We got back at just after midnight tonight to find out that our keys didn't work - a dog had jumped up and caught the snib on the lock. So I knocked on friendly downstairs neighbour's door, borrowed his Yellow Pages, and started going through the list of 24 hour locksmiths.
Over the course of about 40 minutes, I phoned 17 of the bloody things. 3 of them answered; 2 to say that they weren't available, and a third to say that they'd try and find out whether any of their locksmiths were available. (Phoned back 15 minutes later to say that they weren't, and that the earliest we could have one would be at 8am.)
Meanwhile, Cleodhna's upstairs trying to calm down the dogs who are, of course, frantic, running around barking and whining.
While I waited for the "24 hour locksmith" to phone back, I phoned my insurance, on a whim, to see whether we'd be covered for stuff like this. They had an emergency helpline which I got transferred through to, within 5 minutes we'd got a locksmith booked, in a further 20 minutes the guy turned up and started drilling through the lock and jemmying the door open. He's now finishing off installing the new lock.
So here's the lesson of the day: don't trust locksmiths in the Yellow Pages. They are, to a man, dishonest lying frauds and crooks.
Oh, and if you've got dogs who are liable to jump up and accidentally snib the door, make sure you own the place, rather than renting.
(The replacement lock's snib locks the door when pushed up, which should hopefully mean we won't get this problem again.)
