Fright Night

Had a fright on Saturday night about midnight; some guy was trying to break into our bedroom by lifting up the shutters. I was asleep but Pat thought she could hear someone prowling about outside. She thought it was the cat at first, but then she saw the shutters on our double window being raised slowly. They dropped and then the big shutters on our patio doors were being hoisted up from the outside. Pat yelled out, I woke up just in time to see the moonlight coming through as the shutters were dropped very rapidly. Being very brave and foolish (at my age) I leapt out of bed and went through to the dining room, peered out of the ‘fixed’ windows there that look out on to the pool terrace, then did a search of the house. Eventually, after going outside and hearing all the dogs barking in the neighbourhood, we went back to bed. I couldn’t get to sleep for about an hour or more because I could feel tension in my stomach and my heart wouldn’t settle down. The following morning, our neighbour phoned quite early to say she had been burgled during the night. She had been out at a party and came home to find the place had been turned over. We found her jewellery box in our garden. It was empty of course. Quite upsetting for her because she lives on her own too. Anyway, the police were called and details taken, but it’s unlikely she will get any of her jewels back.

The whole episode threatened to derail my appointment at church to preach the sermon that morning. This had been planned for a few weeks and I was keyed up for it. The lack of sleep didn’t help either, and I felt quite nervous as I sat in church waiting to be called up to the front. In the end the sermon went down well and I received a lot of nice words from a lot of people.

Later that day I received a phone call from a friend in England to tell me that he had seen my e-book, NORTH SLOPE listed in the top ten in the Daily Mail’s Weekend colour supplement. The book was at No.7. What a joy!

This morning we’ve been out shopping and buying security locks for our shutters. Better late than never!