Around 8.30 on Saturday morning the OH, the two pooches and I sat in bed, drinking coffee and flicking through various social media sites, (well, the dogs were just lying lazily curled against each other, we discourage them from drinking coffee). I heard some strange noises; scraping sounds and we looked at each other. The noise set the dogs off and they leaped off the bed in furious unison, barking and tearing around the place in a haze of white fur. Yelling at them to be quiet, (which never works!), we tried to listen to the noises. I saw the flicker of a magpie through the window on the landing and we agreed the noise was being caused by birds. No worries then; time for breakfast and getting ready for the day ahead…

Making breakfast, the OH called me over to the window to see one of our garden chairs which had mysteriously moved away from its resting place against the patio table and was down at the end of the garden against the back and side wall. We wondered if the wind had been strong enough the night before to have pushed it across the paving. I popped out to take a photo to share with my twitter buddies, captioned, “the mysterious case of the moving chair”, because, you know, I live my life on twitter 😏.

We left the house before 11am to walk the dogs. As we approached the house on return we noticed our garden gate was open, which struck us as very odd indeed. On closer inspection it wasn’t just open. It was wedged open with a rock that we keep on the inside of the gate.

Our eyes met and I can honestly say my blood ran cold. Someone had been in our garden!

We went into the garden to see if anything was amiss. At first, apart from the chair, everything seemed normal. Then I heard, “Fuck!” and looked at the OH, followed his eyes to the lock on the shed door and froze.

We thought we were doing the right thing by investing in a good padlock for the shed bolt but it never even occurred to us that the padlock was completely impotent and redundant. The scumbags that broke into our garden simply unscrewed the catch on the bolt!

We stood in disbelief, looking at the bolt. He went to open the door and I braced myself. He went inside the shed and I asked if anything was missing. He looked around and I heard the relief in his voice as he said his über fancy professional grade drill was still there. Something still felt wrong to me and as I looked at him standing in the empty space of the shed it hit me… it should NOT be empty. It should have a very decent Carrera mountain bike worth €400 in it.

“Your bike!” I exclaimed and his jaw dropped, “Fuck! Jesus my bike!” his hands flying up to his forehead in disbelief.

He called the police at once and they said they would send a car around within a couple of hours. We talked about when it might have happened. Neither of us could recall if the garden gate had been open when we left the house to walk the dogs, as we had used the front door and not had any reason to check.

Then we remembered the noises that morning… Had we sat in bed listening as some rotten toe rags broke into our shed, wedged our gate open and simply took the OH’s bike? The dogs had barked but our dogs bark at anything and everything, so we think it was a case of “the boy who cried wolf” in this instance. (Or the dogs that barked burglar?)

Some red bricks that edge our 9ft boundary wall had been dislodged on to our lawn, so we figured they scaled the wall, scouted out the shed, used my garden chair to have a look into the surrounding gardens, wedged open the gate and made off with his bike.

Sunday morning came and still no police car, so we paid a visit to the station where the duty officer took our statement and details and promised to send a Scene Of Crime unit to our house. They arrived on Monday morning, took a look around and said there was no evidence to gather and that we should keep our eyes peeled on Internet buy and sell sites for the bike.

The OH is, quite naturally, down about the whole thing. He is annoyed and angry that someone thought they had the right to break into our personal space and steal something he had worked hard to earn the money to buy. He is furious that I was made to feel vulnerable and unsafe in my own home. He questioned why? What makes people think they have the right to do that? I didn’t know what to say to him. I do believe in Karma and I honestly think people like that will get their comeuppance in one form or another. I refuse to believe people who go around engaging in criminal behaviour can be truly at peace and happy in themselves.

So, to be honest I am not sure I can be bothered to scour Internet sites looking for the bike.

It’s gone. It’s over. It’s done.

Incidentally, I asked the police how we could make our boundary wall harder to get over. Knowing that the old practice of embedding broken glass at the top is illegal now, I enquired about the legality of anti-bird spikes to be told that I needed to check with my house insurance company regarding our public liability first. It seems I can legally put the spikes up, but if, whilst trying to break into MY garden, over MY wall, the thief injured him/herself on the spikes they would be fully within their rights to sue me.

There is something very, very wrong about this!

Ciao!

💋

FYI: why the title of this post? The bike was a model called Carrera Vengeance… go figure!

And no it was not insured! Our insurance company had informed the OH that because of the excess charge it was going to cost him more to insure the bike than not. Oh look! there’s our €400!   💸💸💸

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