Uninvited guests

I woke up this morning and made the unwelcome discovery that we'd had intruder(s) in the garden during the night. The fence at the bottom had a slat broken off, the raspberry canes had been trampled and broken as had a couple of tomato plants, the wire fence separating our garden from next door's had been twisted and partially broken - and their yucca bore signs of someoene having been rash enough to tangle with it.

We live in a cul-de-sac, and our garden gives access via the bottom fence and a block of garages with a flat roof to a close leading out onto the main road, which makes a convenient getaway route for your friendly neighbourhood burglar. With this in mind, I rang up The Bill. I wasn't altogether surprised that the guy who took the call didn't seem too enthused with interest with my piece of crime-solving intelligence, but he did check to see whether anything with a possible connection had been reported. Apparently there were some dodgy goings-on involving a car and the house at the far end of the street at around 2.30am, but it didn't amount to anything - or so he told me. I asked him to make a note anyway in case anything else came to light later, so he took my name and phone number.

Later in the morning, I mentioned what had happened to my other next-door neighbour in case their garden had been entered, but she said not. Feeling rather unnecessarily over-suspicious, I checked all round ours, in the bushes, and in the wheelie bins, in case anything had been dumped in a hurry. I noted in passing that the garden tools which I'd developed the very bad habit of leaving out all night, were still there, so I made a note to be more careful from now on!

About 5pm, the doorbell rang. It was the woman from the end house, together with my neighbours' son, who had evidently heard the story of what had gone on. There had indeed been some sort of a disturbance during the night as a result of which she'd had her bag taken with her keys in. I took them to see the damage, but predictably enough there was no sign of either bag or keys. I don't suppose I shall hear any more about it. The offender(s) in the unlikely event of being caught would only get some meaningless community work sentence. Perhaps repairing the fence and planting some new raspberry canes for me would be a suitable reparation?



Oh - I nearly forgot. Raggs must've been disturbed, because she barked in the middle of it all, but only three or four times before going back to sleep, having I imagine concluded she'd done her job as the fierce guard dog and scared them all off. Silly mutt!