The Briefcase.
Lone was given a new briefcase for Christmas. Lone was very proud of his new briefcase as he felt it gave him status in the cut and thrust, dog eat dog world of the Materials Laboratory in Rolls Royce. This has been mentioned before but is worth repeating; Lone is a Metallurgist, he wanted to be a Meteorologist but miss spelt it on his application form to the career's officer.

The briefcase was brown leather with two compartments for Lones important documents and it had little leather loops that you could put your pens in. It also had a brass clasp which had a combination lock. This was nominally set at 000000, but Lone thought this lack status and decided to change the combination. He cast around for a suitable number that would be uncrackable by a would be thief discarding birthdays of sons, wife, cat etc, and hit on the brilliant idea that he felt was foolproof of using Biggars birthday, which was 22 11 39.

In practice this has proved not to be a good idea.

Lone found this out when present at a meeting of high powered executives from the world of striations. Lone with a flourish lifted his briefcase to the table intending to extract his brilliant dissertation on turbine blade failure only to find the briefcase locked and he had forgotten Biggars birthday. This was before mobile phones, so in front of the assembled committee Lone had to ring Biggars and ask him what date was his birthday! Biggars knew nothing of the clandestine use of his particulars and obliged Lone, in front of all, to explain his brilliant, if flawed plan.