Status Anxiety | 28 February 2009

I have taken to sleeping with my grandfather’s cavalry sword under the bed

I caught a burglar last week. I was standing in my kitchen at 11 o’clock on Saturday morning when a young man suddenly appeared at the bottom of the garden. At first, I didn’t realise he was a burglar. I strolled outside in a spirit of genuine curiosity. What was he doing?

‘I was playing football and I kicked the ball over the fence,’ he said. ‘I thought it had gone in your garden, but it must have gone in the next-door one.’ At first, I believed him. He was young enough to be playing football — mid-to-late twenties — and he apologised for having climbed over my back fence. I showed him out through the front gate and it was only when he didn’t knock on the door of my neighbours that I realised he must be lying. Instead, he simply walked off down the street.

I rushed back inside to get my camera, hoping to take a photograph of him, but by the time I got outside again he’d vanished. I didn’t bother reporting it to the police until two days later, by which time a house four doors down had been burgled. I managed to track down the investigating officer and gave him a detailed description of the man I’d seen in my garden. He confirmed that the ‘lost football’ routine was a well-known ruse and that the man had probably been casing the joint. He said he might send round some officers with some images of burglars for me to look at, but he never did.

My wife Caroline was remarkably blasé about all this until we met a couple of our neighbours at a dinner party, who’d been subjected to a four-hour ordeal by three crack addicts.