Does 'keydown' work in B+ alongside Waitevent()?

I'll post some code later today (when I'm at my dev PC) but I have been having trouble detecting keyboard input using keyhit/keydown while in a loop "while waitevent()...stuff goes here... wend". The window I have has a canvas and some buttons. What I am trying to do is move the cursor over the canvas with the mouse and use the keyboard at the same time.

from memory the code, is something like:

timer=createtimer(60)
while waitevent()

select eventid()

;a few events are checked for here like $401, $803 
case $803
end ;for example

case $4001 ;the timer event, although this problem occurs even if I have the keydown statement outside of the select statement.
if keydown(203) then notify("Yes I did push the left cursor key so why doesn't this message appear")
flushevents $4001

end select

wend