Well, I've been a bit rubbish at blogging lately. This is mostly caused by me having a new job (finally).

It's running the IT and business documentation (in the absence of any kind of MRP system) for a small electronics sub-contract manufacturer in Gloucestershire. I only started here at the end of February, so I'm not even quite through my probationary period. I'd be lying if I said it was my dream job - in terms of responsibility, salary and the type of work I'm doing, it's pretty much the same as I was doing ten years ago, and the business culture is, shall we say, relaxed (for which read unprofessional, at least by comparison to other places I've worked) - but it's a huge relief to have a job at all, believe it or not.

Meanwhile, on the home front I've had three unusual events since I started working.

The first happened on my second day in the new job. I left for work at something like 8.15am, and after work I went straight to my local theatre; there was a one-act play festival that the theatre group I belong to had entered, and I wanted to check out the competition (www.swindonweb/ottc - plug over). I got back home at about 11.15pm.

It was bitterly cold, with a strong wind and flakes of snow in the air. My front door was made from painted wood, with the top half carrying a large pane of patterned glass. There was a large hole in this glass pane. My first thought was that the gusty wind had finally taken its toll - I've lived in my house for almost 10 years, and there have been plenty of occasions when the wind rattled the door quite violently, so it seemed plausible. The lights were all off in the house, naturally enough. I opened the door and went in, avoiding the broken glass on my hall floor (no easy task, as it's uneven and in the process of having the tiles taken up, so it's like an indoor gravel path - another story). The house was freezing cold, but the radiators were wamr. The reason was there was a strong cold breeze coming form the back of the house, so I made my way to the back door in my kitchen, switching the lights on as I went through.

The back door was wide open, with swirling snowflakes coming through into the kitchen.  I closed it, still thinking "gosh, that MUST have been a big gust of wind to blow open the back door AND smash a hole in the front. But hang on, the broken glass was inside the house, so that must have been broken first. And the difference in air pressure caused by a change in wind direction sucked open the back door" (like most external doors in the UK, it opens inwards - all those narrow streets).

Then I turned around and saw that my "BFR" portable stereo (the B & R stand for "big" and "radio". Bet you can't guess what the "F" is for...) was missing. This was the first time that burglary crossed my mind. I went into my dining room, in the corner of which I keep my PC workstation. That was all undisturbed at first glance, so I went into my lounge to check my entertainment kit. In the middle of the floor was my BFR. It wasn't a burglary after all - clearly, one of my friends who used to live in my spare room had got drunk after a work function (he still works in my town). Having no way of getting home, he had broken my door to get in, moved some of my stuff into different rooms as some kind of drunken good idea or possible as a joke, and was snoring soundly upstairs. Just as I was rolling my eyes and thinking along the lines of "you scamp!", I noticed that my XBox and all the games for it were missing.

It really WAS a burglary. I called 999 and asked for the police. They said they were really busy (it was pub closing time, so that was understandable) but they'd come as soon as possible, and asked me not to touch anything. It was now about 11.30 pm. My first thought was to try to phone work to let them know what had happened and that, depending on how long the police took to arrive and to take statements, etc., I might be late or absent from work the next day. Both my bosses had their mobile phones switched off, but happily the MD's wife is the Finance Director and she works from home. I managed to catch the MD, who had just come home from an evening out. He was fine - supportive and sympathetic, and it was his idea for me to take the next day off altogether, not mine. So that was one less thing to worry about.

So now I'm in my house at approaching midnight with a hole in my front door, afraid to do anything in case it spoiled any police investigation. I phoned my mum to have someone to talk to and generally be unafraid of being upset in front of. They offered to come and look after the place, but there was no real need and I don't like to feel dependent on them. I had a rant/cry and felt a bit better. Thanks Mum. Then, I phoned my friends who I'd been at the theatre with. She's a teacher, and it was her half term break, and he works shifts and had the next day off, so I knew they'd still be awake.

As soon as I told them what had happened, their first question was "do you want us to come over?" - bear in mind that it was nary ten minutes away from midnight. The police were taking longer than I'd hoped, and I didn't want to wait on my own for them, so I said yes. It would take them about quarter of an hour to get here.

Within about five minutes of coming off the phone to my friends, the police arrived. They were really good, and I felt SO much better once they arrived. They asked lots of questions to build up a statement, I made teas and coffees are required, and felt very old since they looked incredibly young. They said that they would send out the CSI officers the next day, as they don't work night shifts (just as well no crimes are ever committed at night, eh?), and would also ask the burglary squad to come around then. My friends arrived with some board to close up the hole in my front door, tools to fix it with, and cold beers to drink while doing it. Once the police had seen and noted what had happened, they okayed it, and my friend set about fixing my door for me while I was still going over my statement. I am blessed with great friends.

One of the two police (a man and a woman came out) told me that it was unusual to have moved things and not taken them, and that they had probably been disturbed. I had a twinge of worry that now they'd seen inside my house, and earmarked some things but not taken them, they might come back later, but I was told it was really unusual for anywhere to be broken into more than once.

In the end, the tally was 22 XBox games, the console & 2 controllers, my old (backup) mobile phone, and about 25 DVDs. I couldn't be exact, because at that point I had never really catalogued them and I have a large collection (now that I have catalogued it it stands at 322!).

The next day I stayed at home waiting for the CSI unit and burglary squad to call, and to make insurance claims.

CSI turned up first thing - two young (and very attractive) women, and an older woman (within a few years of my age) from the burglary squad. There wasn't a lot the CSI people could do - they only got one decent print. Unlike on TV, where pretty much any surface can yield crisp clear prints and be matched on a computer in seconds, only shiny surfaces and fresh prints are easily retrievable, and only unsmudged ones are useful for indentification. For cases like mine, anyway. They told me there ARE ways to get prints from matt surfaces, but they almost always damage the item they are taken from. Since I didn't really want to throw away my BFR, Bluetooth headset, or the other things they'd touched but not taken, there was no point.

Oh, and in passing, almost all "CSI" units in the UK were called "SOCO" (Scenes Of Crime Officers) until a certain TV franchise started showing on British network television. Who said life never imitates art?

And burlgary squad were only really calling out of courtesy - my statement form the night before had covered everything they needed. They did knock on a few doors nearby, but my immediate neighbour on on side is a frail, deaf old lady, and on the other, the only noise they reported was the banging of my mate fixing my front door after midnight. This wasn't all that surprising - the house had been empty for almost 15 hours, so the break-in coud have happened any time that day.

The next task was insurance claims. My door didn't look very pretty, but the police said it was solid enough to be going on with until I could get a new one. Foreign readers should know that in the UK, it is typical to have buildings cover for the structural integrity of your home, and separate contents insurance for any  possessions (i.e. for the contents of the building). These policies can be with different insurers - mine are. I checked the buildings insurance first, and the statement said there was a £1,000 policy excess. I couldn't imagine that a new front door would cost more than £500, so I'd have to pay the whole cost of that myself even if I made a claim. I decided not to bother.

My contents insurance, on the other hand, only required me to pay the first £50 of any claim, so I rang them up and told them what had happened. They asked for a crime number - a reference number given out by the police after any reported incident - which I had to hand, having been given it over the telephone that morning. They arrange for their loss adjusters to call me, gave me a claim number, and that was that.

A week or so later, the loss adjusters called and asked to make an appointment. I took an afternoon off work (using annual leave this time, rather than relying on my employers' generosity) and we went over many of the same questions that the police had asked (how old was I, how long had I lived at the address, etc.). Rather than a cheque for the value of the stolen goods, I was to be provided with replacements. This had been introduced some time ago to prevent insurance fraud, I was told. People who were legitimate usually anted replacements anyway, and the ones most keen on a cheque were usually fraudsters, so they whole insurance industry had moved to replacements as the default. The woman who visited said that she'd try to arrange for swapping some of the older DVDs, which she doubted they'd be able to get hold of. She also said that she'd ask about possibly trading up to an XBox 360, but wasn't sure if this could be done.

She would pass my list of stolen items on to another third party (a fourth party, I guess) who would actualy do the replacing, and they would be in touch shortly. Much of the list I gave her, especially of DVDs, was a combination of memory, guesswork and wishlist. Not having kept a definitive catalogue, I was only certain of about 15 of the missing 25 titles. I knew there were 25 form the size of the gap left on my shelves, but some of the titles were at best a guess. Some others, I admit, were not ones that had been stolen, but new ones I wanted but hadn't bought yet. It's not that I was completely making them up - they were replacing  one of the 25 stolen that I couldn't remember the title of or didn't particularly want, but I still felt a twigne of guilt.

Within a week, the supplier phoned. They had most of what I needed in stock, but not all of it. Did I mind if I swapped some of the older DVDs for newer ones? This immediately made me feel less guilty about my minor dishonesty, as it was effectively what I'd done myself with titles I didn't want replaced or just couldn't remember. They couldn't deliver at weekends, so I gave them my work address, and the loss adjuster hadn't specifically asked them to raise an XBox 360, so they'd already packed up the old-style Xbox. Not a big problem... A day or two laters, a big box arrived for me at work, with lots of goodies inside.

Some of the games were incorrectly replaced - instead of titles I'd finished or almost finished playing, I was presented with games from the same franchise (e.g. Star Wars) I'd never tried. This was not a bad thing, I thought.

All but four games and three DVDs were replaced in this batch. The others were the ones that needed to be swapped for more current titles.

All was right with the world. Or so I thought...