I have to admit that I have been away for a while as, simply, I can hardly deny it. However, I do have a pretty good excuse for the past 5 weeks. What I would normally do now is write a long piece that explains my absence quickly followed by another noticeable break in my blogging.

So, this time I'm going to try and write regular short posts that build up a picture of what has been happening. So, today 'Burgurlary: why it keeps you up all night'

Tuesday July 29th was not a particularly special day a work: I was continuing to do reinforcement calculations for a job near Dublin while dreaming of my holiday that started the following Friday. That evening I got home at about 8 and as moved towards the frontdoor I noticed something slightly odd; my window was open - from the hinged side. It quickly dawned on me that we had been broken in to.

I felt terrbile as I had always said that it would never happen as we live as far from the front door, on the 7th floor, as you could get and a thief would have to pass evey other flat to get ours. It turns that thieves are prepared to travel much further than I (or the police as it turned out) thought.

Once I got in I quickly checked to see what had been nicked; all the laptops, all the old phones and my magnetic dartboard. Later on we found out that one flatmate had lost some jewelary and a camera, and her car.

I called the police within minutes of getting home and was told that someone would be there within 2 hours. 90 minutes later I was called to say no-one would be there until 2-3 hours. That was the last I heard from them for quite a while. As the flat had to be dusted for fingerprints I couldn't go to bed (it was my bedroom window that was broken). So I lay on the sofa waiting for the police to get here; and waited; and waited. Eventually I fell asleep at about 3.

The next morning we still had heard anything and in the end the police did not arrive until 1. To be fair to them they did find my flatmate's car within a day and it was in (mostly) one piece.

We haven't lost much and apart from the window there was no damage. One of the positives is that I had to get a new laptop and it is sweeeeeeet. Less than 2kg and about 8 times faster than my old one, it is great to use.

So, burgurlary keeps you up all night waiting for the police.
Next time: Discs, discs, more discs and a suspension bridge.