[I'm kinda freaked out...]

16:20 Woke up this morning about 6AM because I heard a noise in my living room. When I go out there I find a drunken Dub looking very puzzled . Seems he was trying to get into the Hostel next door, and mistook my kitchen window for a window belonging to the Hostel. After I let^Hkicked him out, I had a look around. Nothing seems to be missing, but he did manage to tear my cooker hood off the wall as he came in. I dunno if he was a burglar, but I didn't really ask him, just got him out of there ASAP.

Darn. I hate that. I'm a pretty private person, and the fact that a total stranger just climbed in the window freaks me out. It's weird for another reason as well. Almost exactly a year ago I got burgled for the second time. That time I was lucky, because they were dumb. I have a 'change jar' and I dump in any spare change I have at the end of the day. It's kinda handy in emergencies. Well, a few days before they came in, it had been an emergency (needed food ) and I had sorted the change jar, so all the 'big coins' were on top. At first glance it would look like there was a great deal of money in it, but that was only the top inch or so. The rest of it was pennies, about 12 pounds in weight of pennies. Serves 'em right . Anyway, that freaked me out, and I sorta became a recluse for a while, couldn't leave the flat at all. That really sucked, because ICON, a local RPG convention was happening, and I missed it because of that.

The first one, however, was different. I was living in Bridge Street, Waterford, in a ground floor flat. It was kinda nice, and I was managing to make a little money, and I had just taken delivery of a new Nicam Stereo VCR. It was about £700 worth of kit, and was my pride and joy. I was paying for it on Hire Purchase. Anyway, 2 days after I had it delivered, my flat was burgled and it was stolen. Before I'd made even 1 payment! The Garda who came down didn't help matters when he said it had probably been sold in a pub within half an hour for maybe £20-£30 worth of drugs. In addition, they got creative with their bodily functions all over my 2000AD comic collection. On top of that, I had a set of Diaries that I was using to deal with some issues I had, pretty personal and private stuff, and they crapped all over them too.

Let me tell you, that kind of knocked me off the rails there for a while. Ask any of my friends about me in the six months after the burglary, and they'll say 'Yeah, Alan was a total zombie there for a while'. I couldn't cope with anything at all. I slept in my friends place next door for six months afterwards, sleeping in a space behind the couch(!), and kept paying rent on the other place. How nutty is that? Took me ages to crawl out of that hole!

Tell you this much, guys, Monday morning, I'm off to make sure my Insurance is up to date, and looking into upgrading the security on this place a bit!

Later....

Posted by Alan @ 09/05/2001 12:09 PM GMT