Bring it on back to me

When I came downstairs this morning Clover (who you may remember is nearly 13 years old and almost blind) was sitting bolt upright in her bed and Beattie (who’s 10½) was up and about and very agitated and apologetic. We’d had a thunderstorm last night so I assumed they were still upset by that and went to put the kettle on before I let them out. That was when I noticed that the kitchen window was wide open, and my weighing scales gone from the windowsill. How odd. Glancing around I saw that the side gate was ajar, so all the dogs and I went out together to make sure I didn’t have them going exploring. That was when I noticed, through the garage window, that the main garage door was half open. That wasn’t right – The Boy had definitely shut it when he put his bike in last night – it’s a noisy door and I heard him do it. It was when I went round to shut that as well that I noticed how roomy the garage appeared – three of The Boy’s bikes were no longer there. Arseholes. We’d been robbed.

The police were very good and had a rather dishy young PC (I must have been traumatised because I let him go again) round within the hour to take statements, by which time I’d phoned Boy to break the news and Ned was home from work. We all had a prowl around to see if anything else was missing, and discovered that our two camping-stoves had gone from the shelf, as well as Ned’s chainsaw (so Hutters, you’re safe for the meantime). The main body of the scales was found at the side of the garage and its brass trays were on top of the hedge (slightly surreal); the garden poo-shovels had been moved from beside the water butt to under the garage window (even surrealler). I hope the bastards catch something horrible and die painfully (although the fingerprint man says they wore gloves).

Now I’m afraid they’re going to come back and take the other bikes from the rack, and the mower, and the bananana machine, and … and … and … and come into the house and kill us all.