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The Good, the Bad and the Burglar

• Kim Lenaghan
• 10 Sep 07, 03:45 PM

I have just had a fortnight huge chunks of which I would prefer to forget. Hence my reticence to blog ¨C nobody wants to listen to a whiney blogger. However, now with a little bit of distance I feel ready to take you through my two weeks of trauma. Let us begin though by concentrating on the ¡®good¡¯ which is, after all, the word that appears first in the title. Indeed, things started out fabulously well with a quick trip to Paris and a couple of romantic days with the beloved for his birthday. He is now officially the older man, at least until I catch up again on Christmas Eve ¨C I know, an awful day for a birthday! But back to Paris, where the weather was warm and sunny and I sat in picturesque parks and chic cafes watching the world go by and reading an excellent book, a real page turner, called ¡®The Interpretation of Murder¡¯ by an American writer called Jed Rubenfeld ¨C indeed, with a name like that, what other nationality could he possibly be. Better yet he is ¨C wait for it ¨C the Robert R Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale ¨C now that¡¯s what I call a moniker! I never normally read crime novels or books about murder but I picked this up at the airport and it¡¯s more a turn of the century New York whodunit meets a lesson in psychoanalysis delivered by Sigmund Freud. It actually won Galaxy Book of the Year ¨C yes, it¡¯s one of the Richard and Judy finds ¨C but don¡¯t let that put you off. So, well read and slightly tanned, I return from Paris, go straight back into the Saturday Magazine, and everything¡¯s great.

Now, you know I have a dodgy knee, and it¡¯s always in a particularly delicate state after days of traipsing up and down the stairs on the metro. So, can you then explain to me why, after I finished my show last Sunday, I felt the necessity to weed the garden? To make matters worse, in an effort to try and save my knee from too much strain I put my back out. Yes, you¡¯ll have realised by now that we¡¯re moving into the ¡®bad¡¯ sector of this blog. So, feeling very sorry for myself I retired to the kitchen and ate the entire contents of the top two shelves of the fridge ¨C I couldn¡¯t bend down to reach the bottom ones. Sadly, in that emotionally fuelled feeding frenzy, I clearly didn¡¯t take time to check the ¡®sell by¡¯ dates of what had been in there since before I went away, which is the only reason I can think of for the full on stomach upset that followed.

So, I lose several days of my life and it¡¯s about Wednesday when I finally re-emerge gingerly downstairs bringing my handbag with me. Big mistake! Later that evening I¡¯m up in the bathroom, I¡¯ve just had a bath and I¡¯m doing that lotions and potions thing while Ella, as always, is sitting outside the door ¨C it really is all very ¡®Old Shep¡¯ in our house. It¡¯s quiet, the lights are off downstairs and the next thing I hear is the distinctive creaking of my patio doors opening. No, I hadn¡¯t locked the back door, but for goodness sake I was in the house, I hadn¡¯t gone to bed yet, and the dog hadn¡¯t even been out for her final ¡®visit¡¯ of the night.

Of course, as soon as she heard the noise Ella went bouncing downstairs barking her head off, hackles up and rushing fearlessly into an encounter with ¡®Johnny Burglar¡¯. I, on the other hand, was a bit more hesitant, wrapping myself up in a big towel, and shouting down in my best bass voice ¡°Who¡¯s there? Is anyone there?¡± Honestly, my heart was in my mouth as I tip toed downstairs, scared to death of what I would find. I took a deep breath, threw on all the lights and ¡­..the room was totally empty except for Ella standing barking out into the night with the doors shut tight. I opened them cautiously, let her out for a run around and clearly no-one was there.

So where had they gone? That¡¯s the point where my over active imagination clicked in, no doubt fuelled by Mr Rubenfeld¡¯s fine storytelling, and I realised ¡®they¡¯ must be hiding in the cupboard under the stairs. So, I grabbed a ridiculously large knife from the drawer and flung open the door screaming ¡°I know you¡¯re in there!!¡± Honestly, it was like ¡®Halloween¡¯ meets ¡®Friday the 13th¡¯ and I am truly mortified at the corny theatricality of it all. Of course nobody was in the cupboard, how could they be? I have so much rubbish stuffed in there I can hardly squeeze the vacuum cleaner in. Anyway, to cut a long story short I checked around and decided it must have been the wind or something, but I still double locked the doors, kept all the lights on and took Ella, and the knife, up to bed.

Sadly though, this is a story with an unhappy ending. Next morning I got up, went to get my handbag and no sign of it. I searched the house and it was gone. I think I had been so freaked the night before because it was all so quick, nobody was there and nothing seemed to be missing that I hadn¡¯t really taken everything in. Of course you know what a stolen handbag means don¡¯t you! Canceling credit cards, cheque books, changing the locks of the house and the car, all that really annoying, time consuming stuff - not to mention the fact it was a lovely black, Radley bag. I¡¯m still discovering almost daily things that were in it that I hadn¡¯t realised at the time, from make up to bank statements. The worst thing of all though is that terrible sense of violation. Clearly some light fingered lad, or indeed lass, was in and out of the house in the time it took Ella to get downstairs ¨C although there is little doubt that her barking must have acted ultimately as a great deterrent and that she is a canine of courage, the dog hero who saved the day!

As I said, I¡¯ve changed all the locks and I¡¯m having a burglar alarm fitted even as we speak, but I think it¡¯s going to take a while for me to feel 100% comfortable again in my own home, even with Ella, and that feeling of security is a lot harder to replace than a designer handbag and some credit cards.

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