It follows us around, apparently...

We had a burglary in our garage on Wednesday night...can you fuckin' believe it?

No, we hadn't become complacent about security, but maybe we had underestimated the crooked bastards who did this.

Sometime between 23h45, when we went to bed, and 08h00 when I walked out to take my car back to the dealer cos they'd cocked up the bakkie's service, some group of bastards bent open the lock and opened the garage door on SWMSBO's side.

They must have closed the door behind them again, to give them some time to help themselves to a select few items.

First, one of them smashed my rear passenger side window. The car was locked, but not by remote which had been destroyed in the whale beaching by a NSRI colleague. If it had been by remote, the alarm would have gone off and probably chased them away. And, believe it or not, I placed the order two days ago for two new remotes knowing that I needed to set the alarm. Ford phoned me this morning to say the remotes have arrived....{too late, bastards).

They proceeded to ransack the bakkie, took my Police fishing sunglasses (which they will not be able to use unless their eyes are as bad as mine), even took a swig out of a small hip flask that I'd left in the cubbyhole (that will be destroyed), took the 4x4 recovery bag from the back seat (snatch strap, tow cable, gloves, etc) and a headlamp which I keep in the cubbyhole for emergencies. They didn't go into the centre console, where my Garmin unit (clip still stuck to the windscreen) sits in a nice little pouch, and my CD collection (SWMSBO says they would have left those on purpose)...nothing else.

SWMSBO's car was unlocked, so they opened her passenger door and ransacked the cubbyhole there too, but in the end took nothing. If they'd checked the drivers side, they would have found her Garmin, and sunglasses, in the door panel.

They swiped the two mountain bikes from their hooks on the garage roof beams, my cruiser's cover (presumably to carry stuff in), and then trashed my workbench, taking drills, sanders, a router and a jigsaw. They even took a set of new drill bits, but left the beautiful aluminium case of router bits. They also left my angle grinder, perhaps thinking I would need it to cut the damaged lock off the door.

I immediately called the cops and they were very helpful and friendly. They arrived on scene within about 30mins to take statements and look around the scene. The fingerprints guy, though, only pitched up at about 4pm. He swished his brush up and down over a few things and, we hope, found two useable fingerprints on a one-piece fishing rod that I have to leave in the garage. They had to move it to take one of the bicycles off the roof in case it made a noise and left two nice prints on it. All other prints were smudged and unusable, so hopefully those two turn something (someone) up. He also took my prints to make sure they were not mine on the rod, but I haven't used that rod in a couple of months and he says the prints were fresh. Here's hoping...

Anyway, today I have to take the bakkie to the glazier for a new window, pass by Ford for the new remotes to be keyed to my vehicle, then get some quotes for the powertools and buy some new security stuff for the house, and then come back home and complete my insurance claim.

All in all...it's a pain in the fuckin' arse. Let's hope Zuma gets his arse into gear and starts delivering on some of those post-election promises he made in Parliament the other day in his State of the Nation address...