Freckles & Doubt

It's happening again! Chez Evil Landlord is once more infested with an Army of Reconstruction, only four years after the last one, and with the traditional pinpoint accuracy the blitzkrieg has been unleashed just in time to coincide with my exhaustion-making orientation frenzy. This time the panzer divisions are rolling only over the front wall of the garden, which they are assaulting for processes of dismantling the gate where I park my car and moving it five metres to the right, lowering the ground by a foot or so, paving, and installing a carport. I should add, for posterity, that the conversations around this particular proceeding have gone as follows:

(Approximately four years ago):
ME: Gosh, you know, that extreme right-hand corner of the front garden under the plane tree is an awful little space, nothing grows there, it would make more sense to move the second gate there and use that space for a carport. We might actually get something to grow in the space where the car currently stands, which is further away from the plane tree and has more light.
EVIL LANDLORD (dismissively): Nah, it'll never work, there isn't enough space for a car in that corner.
(Invoking the well-known "Well it's his house anyway" clause, I give up and go away.)

(Approximately a year ago, on a more or less averagely drunken Sunday evening):
JO: Gosh, you know, that extreme right-hand corner of the front garden under the plane tree is an awful little space, nothing grows there, it would make more sense to move the second gate there and use that space for a carport. You might actually get something to grow in the space where the car currently stands, which is further away from the plane tree and has more light.
EVIL LANDLORD (struck): You know, you're right!
(Various tape measures are unleashed and measurements slightly wildly made; it is determined that there's plenty of place for a car if you remove the small sad mirrorbush. Plans are submitted to Council for the necessary delay, circumlocution and meaningless quibbles, and Kurt the Amazing Builder and his panzer division are contracted. I roll my eyes. Memo to self, next time suggest interesting renovations only when the EL is safely sloshed.)

The blitzkrieg started on Monday, and by yesterday evening they had already cleared the corner of the tree and all the associated guff that's accumulated there over the last few years (piles of branches, decaying veggie boxes, the old birdbath, weird bits of broken garden ornament, small pocket universes, the like), dismantled the wall where the new gate is migrating to, and dug a large and mysterious hole under the current one. My vague theory that this was probably foundations for the new wall was proved correct when I came home today to find that a new section of wall had mysteriously sprung into being in the gap.

I note, also for posterity, that this has done exactly what I gently suggested it might, which is to block most of the light from the front garden so that nothing much is likely to grow there anyway. Within the terms of the Well It's His House Anyway clause this is covered by the fact that the EL is more interested in privacy and security than in flourishing gardens, which sunk my suggestion that they stick in a lower section of wall with iron palings atop it. We're getting the extra bit on the whole wall anyway, with electric fencing, which I have to admit is something of a balm to my wounded druiding. It is difficult to overestimate the extent to which I am now bored with being burgled.

I include for your amusement pictorial evidence of (a) the chaos, and (b) the size of the gap which will contain the second car and carport. (As of today it's about a foot lower). The presence of the elderly tumble drier is somewhat mysterious, but I think represents a migration from where it's been standing for a year or so in the back courtyard after it died and the EL replaced it. I think it may have been some sort of shrine.




I also hasten to add that, theatrical whinging notwithstanding, I am delighted by this development and ecstatic at the possibility of a carport which will prevent the damned birds roosting in the plane tree from crapping all over my brand new and recently washed car. (Last weekend I drove it back from the carwash and emerged from the car exactly as a hadeda let fly all over the roof. Actual time between stopping and desecration: fifteen seconds). The EL, while somewhat impervious to suggestion from the Lawful Good front, is a kind and generous man of whom I am somewhat fond even while I gently mock his idiosyncracies. I shall also attempt to forgive the Army of Reconstruction for disconnecting the grey water system without warning, plonking their ladder on top of the struggling plants in the bed below the bottlebrush, and piling sand in front of the pedestrian gate so it narrowly missed bouncing back and clonking me in the teeth when I opened it yesterday. These things are sent to try us. Car port, I tell myself. An end to the bird crap. It'll be worth it.

I am sternly informed by my fellow New Year celebrants from last night that I am not in fact permitted to consider the burglary the first act of the new year, but the last act of the old one. To which I say, gee, thanks, 2012. Way to exit with an over-dramatic flounce like a complete arsehole.

We had the usual giant multi-course New Year meal for eight of us last night at jo&stv's, which was just getting into gear around Course 3 (those amazing Vietnamese rice-paper spring rolls Jo made after stealing my cookbooks for inspiration) and my third glass of champagne (needle indicates "slightly incoherent but passionate holding forth about fan fiction" on the drunk-o-metre) when a complicated concatenation of events caused Karen to phone Jo to tell her to tell me that the house had been broken into. It appears the bastards kicked down the front door, rushed in while the alarm wailed, stole the television (again) and Winona (my netbook - woe!) and ran away quickly before the armed response arrived, which they apparently did in under three minutes. ADT hauled in the police, but repeated phoning of my cell was bootless as it was in another room and we were making a fair amount of noise. (Phoning the Evil Landlord was absolutely bootless as he's hiking somewhere in the Cedarburg and is likely to be entirely without either reception or the actual phone). So the nice policewoman apparently sat in the house for an hour twiddling her thumbs in between phoning down the entirety of the list of numbers tacked up next to the phone, which is how she reached Karen, who phoned Jo.

It all makes perfect sense, really. For a given value of "sense". Given that this was at about 10.30pm, my apologies to anyone else who was randomly phoned. (Including the Evil Landlord's sister, who came rushing through from Paarl as a result of a garbled voicemail just as everything was over and we were departing to resume our rightful year-end gourmandising). The Nice Next-Door Neighbour is of the opinion that the unfortunate officer was prodded into the above slightly excessive action by Mrs. Cake, who was rampaging around in her usual busybody fashion when I arrived, and it does seem in character.

I am beyond pissed off. New Year's Eve is logical if you're a burglar, everyone is either out or drunk, but it's bloody rude, and we ended up delaying Robbi and Vi's delectable smoked ribs main course by over an hour. I was deeply attached to Winona, and hadn't backed up the last two hours of LARP writing I did on her, which is making me spit. The TV was six months old, we'd just replaced it after the last burglary, and I shudder to think how the insurance premiums are going to skyrocket. The front door is trashed, the security gate is trashed, and I spent the night at Jo&Stv's rather than alone in a house I couldn't lock properly, fretting about the cats and the unspecified hordes doubtless carrying the house contents off into the night. (Fortunately they didn't).

The marvellous handyman sort of person Claire's dad unearthed for me has just left, having hauled himself out to work cheerfully on New Year's day for a complete stranger, and equally cheerfully accepted whatever the hell I wanted to pay him as he didn't think he'd achieved much. (I showered him with everything in my wallet). Since the security gate tends to the cheap and nasty his efforts to repair the lock were fruitless, but he has nailed the security gate to the front door frame, which means I'll have to do all entrance and exits via the back courtyard and the shed for a bit, but am unlikely to be murdered in my bed tonight unless they bring Grond or a tank or something. I feel very maiden-in-tower. Fetch me flowing golden locks and a prince, stat.

There is probably a stern Dutch Uncle talk I shall be giving the Evil Landlord in the near future, once he's staggered back from his four-day hike, which will entail pointed requests for a better security gate on the front door, a serious repair to the door frame, which has now been multiply splintered by callous door-kickers-down, and something baroque involving electric fencing. This morning's breakfast with Jo&Stv featured blueberry pancakes*, on the grounds that there were blueberries left over from last night's dessert, and a spirited debate on the relative merits of moats, bear traps, bears, bears in boats**, alligators, sentry guns, and something more lethal which explodes the heads of any unauthorised personnel over 20kg in weight, suggesting we'd be fine barring incursions of midget ninjas or (Jo's rather rude contribution) Hobbit.

I need to do That Post, all year-end reflective and resolvey, but right now I'm too narked. However - and I say this with something of forced cheer - happy new year.

---

* New recipe I wanted to try for the hell of it. I approve.
** I have no idea. We did conclude that the bear traps would probably simply sink.

The Avengers trailer has been tabbed in my browser for about four days, which means it auto-plays every time I boot up and load the browser, forcing me to watch it yet again. Oh, fiddlesticks. Oh, darn. All those lovely men being superheroic and flip with authentic Joss Whedon dialogue. Daily. Oh, woe is me. Of course, a superhero movie doesn't have to be particularly intelligent or actually good in any way to make me ridiculously happy (viz. the Fantastic Four Secret Shame), but I'm really looking forward to this one. Apart from Scarlett, who's just a pain.

So, update on the Great French Bank Account Fiasco! I attribute solely to this recent experience my sudden need to re-read Going Postal, which I did yesterday, possibly in morbid fascination with successful cons. Last week's unsuccessful attempt to illegally boost EUR4150 from my account has been superceded by this week's perfectly successful removal of EUR4150 from my account. (This bastard is nothing if not consistent). The bank are being very sweet about it and managed, after much scurrying, to reverse it yesterday, but apparently the thrice-accursed spawn of financial evil (the thief, not the bank. The bank are lovely) actually sent them a hard copy transfer request with all the correct banking details and (drumroll!) my correct signature. This is, to say the least, disturbing. We seem to have ruled out Eric the Hedge-Trimmer, the nice policeman assures me that said Eric has been righteously incarcerated for the last two weeks, so unless he's part of a Ring, it's probably not him.

What it is, is someone who has laid hands on enough of my private documentation to include both a bank statement and a signature, a conundrum which my immersion in Ngaio Marsh and her ilk is responding to by causing a little-used detective gene to come to attention. The availability of my signature is not surprising, I must sign several thousand pieces of paper every year in pursuit of my legitimate admin activities, but its coincidence with the bank statement is considerably curiouser. The bank statement must have come from my study, or from the postal service before it came anywhere near me - I don't carry those around. (I still think it's mostly likely that someone nicked it from the postbox outside our gate). The signature could have come out of something in our recycling, I suppose. Both together could have been accumulated by a half-hour spent sitting outside our house sifting the recycling in conjunction with rifling the postbox, but it would have been rather obvious. Both could also have been lifted off my desk, but I don't really see how. (Apart from anything else, the giant pile in my inbox is giant, and frequently weighed down by the Hobbit). I am gently revolving a third theory, that both were the result of someone digging around on the hard drive of my old computer, the one which was stolen a couple of years ago. But I really don't think the French bank details were ever on there; hell, they're not on the current one, which means it's not even that my nice new wireless wossname has allowed someone to hack me. In the immortal words of Detritus, it a mystery.

The whole thing is causing me (in addition to the moments of incandescent rage, because how bloody dare he) to become horribly paranoid, and to spread that paranoia around a lot. Anything that goes into recycling, for example, is going to be shredded into teeny tiny bits. All correspondence at all about anything whatsoever is going to go to the box number, not the postbox. I've put another padlock on the postbox, in a futile stable-door-horse-bolted sort of gesture, but I don't trust it. I shall discuss with the nice bank people the possibility of simply shifting the whole bang shoot to another bank account, although that's going to be a royal pain in the butt. But I ask you, nice witterers: do you know where your bank account details go? what bits of paper are innocently being recycled? Can you say you are safe? she says in the thrilling tones of a bad drama trailer or an insurance sales pitch. It happened to me! it could happen to you!

And while we're at it, are you making sure you exercise your feet on long plane journeys, too? My mother didn't raise me to be a cautionary tale, but if it's a gig that ends up being any use to anyone else, I'll take it.

Phooey. Unspecified bastards leaped over the garden wall this afternoon and kicked down the side door into the garage. This did them no good at all, as the alarm promptly went off, and they seem to have departed without actually taking anything. Annoying for us as well as them. I must say, though, it's curiously comforting to arrive home to an unexpectedly kicked-down door, to find the armed response company already reassuringly in possession. Wandering through a potentially devastated house is much less unpleasant when there's a nice, large dude with a gun taking point. For some reason, however, this is making me want to re-watch all my Vin Diesel movies. I may be incurably frivolous. It'll also have to wait until I've finished randomly watching Lord of the Rings, which is reassuringly full of nice, large dudes with swords.

I was off work yesterday with the gastric bug which seems to be doing the rounds, and am consequently disclaiming all responsibility for the more than unusually wayward nature of this post. Not eating much for thirty-six hours is making me rather light-headed. This is, however, possibly why, despite the assaults of South African crime and the lining of my own stomach, I'm in a vaguely up space. I shall now go and hit d_hofryn for all the latest in Castle, Fringe, Supernatural and Vampire Diaries, and then shall callously ignore it in order to vaguely perve Arwen, Aragorn and, for some reason, Boromir. I really like Boromir. I think it's the way he says "They have a cave troll."

Gah. Likewise, phooey. Had another Great South African Experience yesterday, wandered home after work to find the house ransacked and mysterious thumping noises in the Evil Landlord's bedroom. Stood on the patio for approximately three hours, although in hindsight it might actually only have been ten minutes, feebly pressing my handy-dandy key-ring panic button and hoping the intruders were as cowardly as I was. Fortunately they were, and presumably made good their escape through bedroom window (they levered off the cast-iron burglar bars) while I was still waiting for the armed response. At any rate, when the nice gun-toting security guys arrived the house was empty of burglars. Also, of computers, monitors, stv's DS console, jo's leather jacket and my nice little Grundic CD player that was a communal gift from friendly friends lo these many years ago, plus various sundries. Even as I write the sweet constable lady is sitting in my office re-taking my statement, on the grounds that the one the cops took last night made no sense. (I think this may have been them rather than me, although I wasn't at my best owing to the wibbling).

We got off lightly, actually - all our data is more or less backed up, and supposing insurance pays out, I was due for an upgrade anyway. The thieves, clearly lacking all taste and discernment, either spurned my CD, DVD and jewellery collections or were interrupted before they could grab them. (They did, oddly enough, steal three bars of soap and a pair of my socks, which they subsequently dumped by the rubbish bin. The modern burglar appears to lack all coherence as well as taste). It would have really burned if they'd taken the discs and jewellery, those collections are highly personal, selective and amassed over a process of years and continents.

The whole thing was probably the EL's fault, since his early-morning fog caused him to wander off to work without setting the alarm, under the vague delusion that jo&stv were still in the house. In revenge, he gets to deal with the insurance. Heh. Also, I now have absolutely the best grounds in the world for seriously nagging him about fixing the bloody front gate.