Coza24
Day nine since our burglary, which I described here last Friday, and the fallout continues.
All week, we’ve been slamming stable doors like crazy: changing the locks; ordering a video doorbell; bolting windows and doors, top and bottom, then neurotically checking and re-checking them before bed; waking in the small hours, suddenly alert, with hearts thumping, at the faintest imagined creak of a floorboard…
Readers who have suffered the same fate will understand just how unsettling it is to know that intruders have been in our homes, helping themselves to our belongings as we slept.
They will know, too, that the anxiety lingers on for the victims, long after the culprits have melted into the night and put their violation of our nests out of their minds.
Meanwhile, we’ve yet to be reunited with our car. Though the burglar left it outside our house, he made off with both sets of our electronic key fobs. This meant that he or an accomplice could return at any moment to steal it.
Only 3.9 per cent of burglaries result in a charge, while in 48 per cent of neighbourhoods nationwide, police have failed to solve a single case in the last three years
So the last I saw of my beloved A-Class Merc, as I reported last week, was it being lifted on to the back of a lorry on the night after our burglary, to be taken to a garage belonging to our insurers.
A week passed and the garage emailed to say the sophisticated locks could be changed only by a Mercedes dealership, on production of my registration document, driving licence and a signed and dated letter of authorisation.
This was yet another nuisance, on top of the palaver of having to order replacements for stolen bank cards, driving licences, travel passes, our son’s passport and the rest.
I reckon it will be well after Easter before I can get behind the wheel of my own car again.
Funny, isn’t it, that we’re always reading how easy it is for tech-savvy thieves without key fobs to drive off in keyless cars, by cloning the signal to start them. If only it were as cheap and easy for the car’s rightful owners.
Amid all our woes, however, I’ve had two great consolations — apart from the fact that nobody died, nobody was hurt and not very much was taken.
One was the guilty thought that has often occurred to me when something bad has happened to me or a family member, in my otherwise happy and humdrum life: ‘Ah, well, at least I’ll have something to write about this week!’ (It’s not a very noble thought, I admit, but I suspect it will be familiar to a few fellow columnists.)
And the other? That is the extraordinary kindness shown to us by all sorts of people since that grim morning when we discovered what had happened. I’m thinking not only of the commiserations of friends, colleagues and drinking acquaintances at the pub. Neighbours whom we hardly know, if at all, have bent over backwards to help.
Alerted by my message on our street’s WhatsApp group, those with video cameras have been scouring their footage for anything suspicious on the night of the crime and reporting the results.
One, whom I’ve met only briefly at a street party, left a consoling bottle of wine for us between our bins.
Another, who said he was an odd-job man, came round and volunteered to do anything we needed to secure the house, without charge.
The woman who delivers our papers was sweet to my wife — as was a man who got chatting to Mrs U outside the supermarket when she was waiting for me to pick her up in our hire car.
Disconcertingly, he told her he’d served time in prison and Broadmoor (all sorts tend to take a shine to her). But she said he was utterly charming when she described our ordeal.
He offered all his sympathy, helped with her bags and said he’d like to get his hands on the burglar who had done this to such a nice lady. Call me a wimp, but I was nevertheless heartily relieved that she didn’t invite him home for tea!
As for readers of last week’s column, some of whom have suffered much worse experiences than ours, I’ve been deeply touched by their sympathy and good wishes, expressed in messages, letters and cards.
A friend even tells me that a mate of her uncle, from Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, almost had to be physically restrained from driving straight up the M4 to London to try to apprehend the culprit himself.
Now, if we were to rely entirely for our assessment of the British people on the comments posted on social media, or the tone of some exchanges in the Commons, we might be forgiven for viewing our country as a seething cauldron of criminality, hatred and bile.
But as the general reaction to our ordeal reminds me, the truth is very different. Far from loathing each other, most of the people of Britain, from every walk of life, are full of fellow-feeling and compassion.
Certainly, we all have our faults (and Mrs U might argue that I have more than my share). But though I hate to sound like Pollyanna, the fact is that the overwhelming silent majority of my compatriots are, deep down, not only law-abiding but thoroughly good-natured.
Indeed, when I wrote earlier that my wife and I had been shown ‘extraordinary’ kindness, perhaps I chose the wrong word.
For in this country at least, it remains quite ordinary to be kind. It’s the vicious, the criminal and hate-filled who remain the exceptions, thank God.
We saw it in the tremendous outpouring of love for Kate, the Princess of Wales, after her dignified appearance on television to reveal her diagnosis with cancer. Indeed, I reckon that for every one of the Princess’s tormentors, there are at least 500 who wish her nothing but well.
Come to think of it, the Princess herself strikes me as extremely good-natured, in a comfortably ordinary way. This was illustrated movingly this week by a sweet story in The Sunday Times, told by the journalist and broadcaster (and former champion table-tennis player) Matthew Syed.
He was travelling by train with his eight-year-old son, Ted, when he went to the lavatory while the boy waited in the corridor outside. Through the door, he heard the sound of a woman’s kind voice, asking: ‘Are you alone?’ Ted replied: ‘No, I’m waiting for my dad.’
Let Mr Syed take up the story: ‘As I was washing and drying my hands, I heard peals of laughter coming from the two of them. My son had taken out my Commonwealth gold medal . . . (which he’d insisted on bringing with us) and was clearly brandishing it proudly.
‘They were now bantering, enjoying each other’s company, and I felt a genuine sense of gratitude. My son had been made to feel special by this stranger, and I resolved to thank her warmly.’
As you’ve guessed, the stranger in question turned out to be Kate, who was then the Duchess of Cambridge. Ted hadn’t recognised her and she’d had no idea who the boy’s father was. She’d just acted with the ordinary kindness of a good-hearted mum.
But I’ll leave the last word to her father-in-law, the King. In words to whose truth I can testify since our burglary, he says in his Easter broadcast: ‘We benefit greatly from those who extend the hand of friendship to us, especially in a time of need.’
With that, I wish all my well-wishing readers a very happy Easter.
