I've never been robbed before. I've never been mugged, intimidated out of money or anything else on the street. Harrassed? Yes. Shouted at? Yes. But an actual crime being committed against me or my property or posessions? Nope, no way. I've hardly lived in cosseted seclusion all my life, either - I lived on a pretty shitty council estate in Hackney for a year, for example - and spent most of my twenties getting into all kinds of chemically perilous states late at night in London, Seoul, Southampton, Bournemouth, Paris, Cardiff - you name it. Not one sniff of real trouble.
I've lost keys, phones, wallets, paperwork, girls' numbers, blokes' numbers, faces I should recognise, more cash than I care to count, tenancy agreements, coats, friends, entire streets and literally hours and hours from my memory thanks to a fondness for beer, and on one notorious occasion, my friend Jon's biblically powerful skunk. I argued with complete strangers about the best way to cross a deserted park behind Hackney marshes at four in the morning. I have put myself in line for a serious shoeing on so many occasions in the past, and no such shoeing has been forthcoming.
Since hitting 30, it's fair to say that things have calmed down a fair bit on that score. Where once hangovers were a twice or thrice-weekly ocurrence, dealt with with the aplomb of a professional and only seldom impinging on the serious side of things, they are now very rare. I can recall a grand total of four in 2012, for instance. There's a problem with that though. Like Q branch between Bond films, the obsidian-hearted, profoundly evil agency that arbitrates the distribution of hangovers have been hard at work since I regularly gave them cause, and they now seem to sport a greatly improved range of ordnance. Whereas 'being a bit hungover' in 2004 meant having a headache that was supremely treatable, and could be crushed utterly by two paracetamol followed by either a bracing walk in the cold, a Big Mac or a solution of water, black coffee and chocolate, things have have apparently got real. These days, the prefix 'a bit' has been rendered obselete. One is either hungover, or one is not; it's a binary state - on or off.
I like to think of myself as someone who, broadly speaking, believes in some sort of universal karma. Basically, if I fuck you around, you have the right to do an equal and opposite amount of fucking around back. That seems fair. I have at times come to realise that this might just be how the world works. Then again, things happen completely out of context, in entirely unforeseen ways that seem to be 'unfair'. Taking a broad view of the past two years of my life, however, it's hard to reconcile the 'good' as being equal or opposite to the 'bad'. Ordinarily I would precis like a bastard at this point and fill you in but suffice to say, if the past two years read like an outtake from a Mike Leigh film, the events of the last week are the spirit crushing denouement. Events have run away with us ever since we took the red pill and bounced to London in pursuit of fun, funds and friends in 2011, and all the central heating breakdowns, electrical failures, 35-hour shifts, shouting, swearing, tears and tribulations have coalesced in my mind into one long, emotionally turbulent whirl. The events of Thursday night, on the other hand, are different. This was inverse karma, or simple bloody bad luck, beyond what seems fair or right. Last Thursday, complete strangers took it upon themselves to enter the home we had built in this often frustrating, malfunctioning city, and stole things we have worked so hard to buy.
Honestly, it would make a good film. I got home from work the other day and stuck the key in the door, in the pitch-black drizzle that so often characterises Brixton. The key didn't open the door. Peering around my feet, I found the pane of glass from the front of the door resting, basically intact, by my feet. Closer inspection of the door - it was very dark, after all - revealed that someone or something had tried to kick their way in. I froze.
Wondering what to do, and indeed what had happened (my first thought was that a loose pane of glass had fallen from one of the windows over my head). It sank in, and I phoned The Other Half. No reply; more rain. My phone then decided that now was the ideal time to break down. Phoneless, staring at a smashed in door, and realising that (a) there might still be someone in my house and (b) the house could be completely ransacked inside, I ran round to the cornershop, and borrowed the shopkeeper's phone. Called The Other Half again. No reply. Called the cops. They would be 'round within the hour', they said, and I should just sit tight. There go my plans for a night up West, I thought.
Two doughty souls from the local copshop duly arrived, booted what was left of my door in, and we proceeded to wander sheepishly from room to room, looking for stuff that wasn't there. The only things missing were my prized MacBook Pro (a gift to myself after a very, very long shift and a lot of overtime) and our PS3, which we bought out of a Christmas bonus for ourselves in 2012. Toys we had bought ourselves to celebrate the fact that for the first time in five years, we could buy nice things and not feel guilty. The irony of this wasn't lost on me, even at the time.
So anyway, statements were taken, and then a nice Scene of Crime woman came round. She used a lot of very technical terms relating to fabric and types of trainer, while looking dissapointedly at our bits of glass. After 40 minutes brushing things with powder she informed me that our assailants had foiled the latest in forensic technology by dint of their decision to wear gloves while breaking into my house. She was almost positive, however, when she reeled out that one about an 'obscure kind of trainer' that scriptwriters on The Bill used to rely on for a bit of drama, but I could tell from her general air of resignation that my shit was a gonner. All frivolity aside, I was quite tempted to sit in the dark with a machete across my knee, waiting for a return visit from our light-fingered friends, but was talked out of it by Sailor Jerry.
Next it was the turn of a very nice man with a big new door. After five hours of sawing, drilling and increasingly florid Polish epithets, Friday ended with our flat boasting The Hardest Door in Camberwell. It is nails. It has four locks on it, and may as well have HAVE ANOTHER GO, YOU HORRIBLE CUNTS, WE'VE STILL GOT LAPTOPS AND GUITARS YOU KNOW etched into its surface in four-foot high letters.
The door may well be hard as nails, but it's a porous one, so today's incessant rain won't be doing it any good. I'll get it painted this week (and may yet retain the message above). The Other Half has suggested we leave London to Londoners and Spanish students, and I'm inclined to agree with her. Getting out of here just seems like the right thing to do. Everything that could have gone wrong seems to have done, and I for one have gone through enough in the last two years.
We have savings, and could move on.
I am fed up feeling unlucky.
I'll keep you posted.
