Further passport woes and then lost keys (again)

After last weekend's trial's and tribulations running around with photos for Toby's passport renewal which I desparately needed as we go to France on Sunday, I thought we were all sorted with the appointment at Peterborough passport office today.

But life is sometimes never easy and Liz phoned me in anguish from the office to tell me that they wouldn't accept the photos's I'd done as they "were not up to quality".

Arrgh !

They suggested making an appointment for the next day, Saturday, which would give us no time at all before we left. I sent Liz back in to the passport office to plead our case and she managed to get a better suggestion, that she go back to the office at 5:30pm with Toby (having picked him up from school) and they could take his photo and process the application there and then.

So change of plan again, more miles on the car up to Peterborough, but this time there were no problems, she got the photos done to the passport office' satisfaction and the new passport is in production.

I've got to now go back to the office tomorrow lunchtime and collect the passport, so that'll be the third 120-mile round trip we've made to get this passport sorted out, but fingers crossed we won't have any more last minute problems.

However we did have problems tonight as we packed the car for the holiday journey, I noticed that we'd not seen any sight of the keys for our Brittany House.

You may remember that I similarly wrote in May 2008 of losing the French house keys only to find that I'd already put them in the car, but this time we'd packed the car and definitely not seen them.

Of course since we last went to France we'd moved house in the UK so I was beginning to get a bit stressed as to where the keys might be.

I was fairly sure that they were in a box in the garage of other "stuff" to go to France but we'd put the box in the car and they weren't in it at all.

So we spent a good couple of hours searching for the keys. In my study, in the kitchen, the utility room, in the garden workshed, in the loft, in boxes that we hadn't unpacked yet, in the dining room, the lounge, our bedroom, in the car (both my car and Liz's - just in case), but they were no where to be seen.

I was convinced they were in a box of France stuff but that had gone into the car and they weren't in it. So thinking they had somehow fallen out I started methodically going through everything in the garage. There's quite a lot of stuff in the garage still after the house move, bottles of wine, garden chairs, paint, more paint, ladders, wood, books, but no keys.

Eventually after an hour's searching the garage, guess what? I found near the back under several other boxes a box of stuff labelled to go to France.

And in the box, the French house keys.

So relief at finding them but yet more late night stress. Hence why I am still awake and blogging past 1am !

Any suggestions as to where to put the house keys so that I don't lose them will be gratefully received ...