I wondered when it would happen: those bunches of keys I noticed on the top of the bus shelter outside St Charles House Tax Office have gone.

I don't doubt they're residing quietly on a shelf in the council lost property office before they go gently into that rusting goodnight all of us end up going to sooner or later.

That's the prosaic way of looking at it; keys swept off the top of the shelter by a long-handled council broom, some puzzlement as to why three bunches, then on to the next job, before heading back to the depot and logging them as lost property. That's the prosaic way of looking at it. Tame, and probably true.

If, of course, that's how it actually went.

What if, and we're allowed imagination, these orphaned keys were part of something else: for instance, a plot device in a piece of page-turning anxiety by Stephen King - 'possessed keys' - opening on to something dark and disturbing; then again, what if they had an Alice in Wonderland like role, unlocking a portal to a fantasy world of articulate top-hatted animals; or maybe they're the hinge in a wise cracking piece of Elmore Leonard criminalia, somewhere in the small fry demimonde, there's an incredulous conversation going on: "...what the fuck, Leo, ya did what....ya put the keys where...? Jesus H. You gotta get 'em down !"

I'm wildly speculating here...but how did those three bunches of keys get there and what do they mean? Answers anyone?