Julie's Boggle

Initially, Friday morning didn’t have much to distinguish it from any other day. I surfaced just before 05h00, when Jonathan began to make his first little noises as he amused himself in the dark.

From a half-asleep state, I heard Tom pad off to close Jon’s bedroom door and then come back to bed. What I did not hear after that were the faint metallic donging noises that Tom lay awake listening to. Wondering if he was being paranoid, or if they were coming from the burglar bars on our window…

What I definitely did hear a few minutes later, was a VERY loud metallic clang, right outside. While I was still wondering dazedly what had caused that, Tom had already leapt out of bed and was across the room and hauling open the curtains.

I leapt out after him, heart racing, staring out onto the shadowy front flower bed and seeing nothing unusual.

Right until Tom said “Someone’s been jacking the burglar bars!” And sure enough, two of the solid-looking bars on our main window had been forced apart. Not wide enough to fit a person through, but enough to make it obvious that someone had been trying to get in!

The police were called and duly showed up within about 20 minutes. We didn’t have much for them to see but they did take some notes and sent round an officer later in the day to dust for prints.

Aside from the one fact that the catch on our window was visibly open (that might have been me, some weeks ago), the policemen were all generally quite bemused by the attempt. After all, there are a number of basement flats without any burglar bars in the surrounding streets. And why someone thought they’d be able to successfully get through our heavy-duty bars was something that left them scratching their heads.

It was also puzzling that Tom hadn’t seen anyone at all when he dashed over, but we guessed that they must have scarpered silently up the stairs the moment they made that huge noise. Or perhaps they’d given up seconds before and that was a belated response from the protesting bars as they removed the jack.

The aftermath of all that was a slightly longer day for Tom and me :yawn: (Jon didn’t wake up again, despite the discussions with policemen in our hallway, until 07h15), and Tom helpfully electing to work from home. It did feel a little creepy to know that someone was trying to get in while we were sleeping but I tried not to dwell on that, and all the other miscellaneous house creaks and murmurs, as I lay in bed last night.

Longer term, plans are already underfoot to get the damaged bars repaired, and to replace the wobbly old Victorian-style sashes with some more robust double-glazed ones. With locks.

And so life goes on.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.