Saturday 18/06/11

On Friday afternoon I got a text telling me that my parents’ house had been burgled. Not an anonymous text, of course – it was from my mother who had only just found out herself. While I don’t live there any more, it’s nice to know that they thought I should hear about it immediately. Unless they suspected I was the person who had broken in and nicked their possessions without their consent. Obviously, I wouldn’t and didn’t do that. What I take from them is done brazenly, in perfect view of them and often amounts to little more than coffee and sandwiches. Which barely constitutes criminal behaviour, as the judge said himself.

The thankfully small list of stolen items throws up a bizarre picture of what the actual criminals who took them were like. Clearly they were fond of laptops, since they took two Macbooks, but only if they were made by Apple as there were another three Windows machines in the house that they could’ve taken with them. The taste for Apple goods is the first suggestion that they are stupid – as anyone who wants Apple products is.

Next they took an iPod Nano. A broken iPod Nano. A broken iPod Nano that was sat in a cupboard next to two perfectly functioning Nintendo DS’s. They left the DS’s but took the Nano - they also ignored the Wii console in the lounge. Clearly not fans of Nintendo, or gaming, these robbers.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be listing all my family’s electronic devices on here for the world to see. The temptation to steal was enough for some burglars who weren’t sure what was inside. Any potential thieves reading this may get inspiration when seeing what’s on offer. It could spark a mass ambush of my folks’ house. Never mind, it won’t happen again.

The last thing that was noted as missing was my mother’s asthma inhaler. Clearly proving that these are some ambitious big-time crooks, drugs must commonly be a massive incentive to commit criminal acts, but Ventolin? Seven quid for a prescription at Cherrymead Surgery is hardly a massive effort and it’s not as if it’s a difficult drug to ‘score’. If there were tonnes of cocaine drugs stacked in the hallway it may be easier to understand – as far as I know, cocaine is pretty difficult to get your hands on and it ain't cheap, unlike asthmatic relief medication. Luckily, the paracetamol in the medicine cabinet was left untouched.

I’m no detective, but these choices are so idiosyncratic that the list of suspects cannot number more than three in the whole of the south east of England. There can’t be that many criminals with penchants for Apple goods (whether they work or not), breathing complaints and no interest in gaming. Monk would surely work it out, although it’s not a million miles away from describing Steve Jobs.

A forensic investigator came round to dust for prints (the coolest thing I’ll ever write) and we’ll wait to hear back about that. To eliminate our own family as suspects for when the results come back, we were instructed to send off our own fingerprints to the ‘lab’. My dad, in his element as a policeman for the last 25 years, took great care to ensure that transferring the ink from our fingers to a sheet of paper was done with immense accuracy. It was pretty cool, as far as being victims of crime goes.