Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
It's the night before I leave for Africa. It's 2am and I've lost my yellow fever vaccination certificate, one of my shoes and my passport as been MIA for about six hours. Apart from that the packing is going swell...
Goodness, It's been a whirlwind of a few days. On Friday morning I woke up at 6.55am to find the all the lights downstairs on. I thought this very strange as I had made a concerted effort to switch them all off the night before (and had thought myself very brave to sleep downstairs, alone with all the lights off!!!) On closer inspection, however, I saw the kitchen window wide open and a muddy footprint on the windowsill. Thinking someone must be in the house, I panicked and locked myself into my bedroom and logically called my parents in France (who would of course be able to help out with any imminent dangers despite the fact they were in a different country.) Howling and crying, not sure if the person in the house had gone, I realised that all my suitcases, rucksacks and holdalls that I had moved in the night before had disappeared and the front door had been left open. I'D BEEN BURGLED!!!! My dad calmed my down (slightly) from my hysterics and told me to call the police but "NOT 999".
After a brief chat with a nice lady at "118, 118" I was put through to Cardiff police station where I spoke to another nice lady who put me through to the control room where another nice lady told me that an officer would be there within the hour...
An hour and twenty minutes later, rather later than predicted, my officer (who was not a nice lady) arrived with a cup of coffee from Burger King. After a thorough investigation of the property and grounds lasting about half an hour he ascertained that yes, indeed, my suspicions were correct, I had indeed been burgled.
In the hours to come, CSI came and dusted for fingerprints and took imprints of all the muddy footprints that the burglar had trailed through the house. They also fingerprinted me. I think that this is a very clever tactic in which to distract victims of crime from their misery and fear. It took at least half an hour of scrubbing to get the blasted ink off my hands.
Meanwhile, I was becoming more and more melancholy because they had taken all my kit of Africa and all my clothes, even my dirty washing basket. I had moved in the night before and so all my things were in boxes and bags which they had then just wheeled out my own front door. They'd taken my medication for Africa and every single pair of shoes I own (apart from a pair of pink wellies and some flip flops)
The inspector came round at around 11am, having found my medicines which had been handed in by an old lady down my road, after having found them, dumped in her garden.
Then he came back at 12.45pm and said " Would you care to come round the back of the house to collect your things?"
Incredibly, my stupid burglar had dumped my stuff in the alley behind the house! The only thing wrong with it was the fact that it was a little damp for being in the rain for hours.
I went from being the unluckiest girl in the world to th luckiest. Sadly, quite a few other people were burgled that evening and had laptops and T.V.s stolen which it is doubtful that they will ever get back.
Emma, my dearest friend and flatmate, called me in the evening to say that she had decided to come fly back to Cardiff to stay with me.
WARNING... soppy part coming up!
I'm so much happier now and definately out of my rough patch. I'm so lucky to have such incredible friends and housemates. Thanks to my family for calling me ever five minutes and alerting the 'sisters' and to my friends who all offered to stay with me/ drive me round Cardiff!
WARNING OVER
So here I am, almost three in the morning, trying to cram a book of Irish poetry into my rucksack as a present for Lucia and Cait and searching for the other shoe...
Wish me luck.
- comments