Be Excellent To Each Other

Chavs, youths, neds, whatever. They seriously need to be sent to an island to be used as bombing practice by the RAF, or set loose in a Bolivian prison or SOMETHING to sort them the fuck out.

It was twenty to eight this evening, and I was just about to take my homemade jerk chicken out of the oven for dinner. Kate was finishing up washing the dishes. I heard shouty voices through the open kitchen window (not uncommon, everyone from chavs to little kids to adults to families walk down the lanes here, no good reason why mind you, they don't save you any time) and then incredibly loud metal banging. We both looked out the window (which faces the back garden and the garage) and through the garage window I caught a quick glimpse of a sliver of sunlight.

I ran upstairs, grabbed some keys, put on sandals, and went out into the garage to investigate. Sure enough, there was a large dent in the bottom right hand side. Closer inspection revealed that the little wheel mount (these wheels guide the door up a track mounted on the frame) was bent at about a 45 degree angle - still attached to the door by some distressed screw holes, and also still sitting in the track. In each bottom corner are metal plates that the bottom of the door comes to rest against - the door had been kicked with such force it's been knocked PAST the plate and now rests against it on the wrong side.

We ate dinner without even noticing due to anxiety and I immediately called the new non-emergency police number, 101, and gave my details. Ten minutes later as I was trying to work out if I could fix the damage, a proper copper called back and took the whole story down. I pointed out there's a small workshop (he must have been using Google Earth or something as he seemed to know every location I was describing) at the far end of the lane with a CCTV camera. It almost certainly isn't angled high enough to see my garage, but it certainly will see people walking down the lane. This, the cop conceded, was probably the only thing they had to go on, and 'this is the age we live in I'm afraid'. I got my crime reference number and that was that.

I can't really fix it. To get it back in the right position would need the righthand corner of the door popping back around this metal plate. Given the amount of force needed to get it where it is now, I can't very well kick it back into place. A crowbar or something might be able to lever it around, but I'm not Gordon Freeman. And removing the plate altogether is impossible as, while I have a socket that fits, it only fits into a crappy plastic screwdriver head that I can't get anywhere near enough leverage on to actually loosen the three bolts that hold it in place. So it'll have to stay like that until I can get a garage guy out to have a look at it. Ironically, the door is now impossible to open, which means while I can't get out, nobody can get in either.

Nevertheless, I'm sitting here feeling really, really anxious, especially as I was more or less witness to it. I don't know if I'll sleep well at all and I just can't understand what the point of going around kicking someone's garage door off one of its hinges is. The worst case is they want in to either break into the house or steal my bike or something. The more likely case is that it's the last friday of half term week and, drunk and frustrated, 'youths' saw the door as something to vent on. It's covered in graffiti anyway (and has been more or less since it was installed a year ago) but this is too far.

Not happy.

Condolences, duder. Some scrawny fucking rat boy walked up the bonnet of Helen's car, over the top and leaped from there onto the bonnet of mine about 18 months ago now. A neighbour came up the to the house the next day to tell me about it, as they'd had the side of their van punched by the same group before they did what they did to our cars. Scrotey little bastard had cut his hand doing the punching, and had dripped blood all over our cars. Scene of crime polispleb came and took a sample, got a match and they arrested the little twerp. I got a phone call from the polis saying that the ratboy "was very sorry" and they wouldn't be even cautioning him. So I've still got a dent in my bonnet, unrepaired. Waste of time.

Little fucking cunts. Hopefully the CCTV will help but we all know very little will happen.

Some people are just arses.

And, yes, I am releasing a book of my collected wisdom, ready for the Christmas market.

Yup, I fully expect sweet fuck all from this. I'm calming down now, figuring that even the most deranged ratboy would know it's foolish to try and break into a garage in broad daylight in a fairly busy area like this (remember, I have a pub and a chinese takeaway as neighbours) because a night in custody means a night he can't guzzle down White Lightning and shag some twelve year old bird called Chardonnay or Kylie Capri Ghia or something.

I also think there was no motive beyond mindless destruction as I've not actually used the garage door nor the bike in nearly a week and therefore any ratboy who's seen either has since had it pass out of his long term memory.

It'll weigh on my mind for a while yet, but I'm coming to at least accept that this is (with any luck) 'it'.

Dimmers, sorry to hear about your car. I'm reluctant to park on the main road here as one neighbour's told me the local kids have done a similar thing to cars parked along there. Saying that, where I always aim to park (side road down the side of the house) is where it got dinged by some clot in what must have been a very big 4x4 which left me with a nice dent in the hood (since repaired). I've also had my Skoda badge stolen off the tailgate (really), my mirrors bent the wrong way and a few extra scratches... but thankfully that's it.

Speaking of Dimmers, if they DO get an image from the CCTV, d'you suppose you could use your experience of Far Cry 2 to come and train the local cops to instantly recognize people from the blurry image, and thus pounce on them?

Really sorry to hear that Metal. Hope you and yours get over the jitters soon. I'd say that it'd be the latter 'just something to kick' case, but that doesn't make it any less hurtful or contemptible.

Can't really say anything to make it better outside of voicing fantasies of injuring chavs severely in novel ways, so I'll just do one of those dimlie hugs to you, big fella.

Now now - that's the Chav parent's fault.

Well you saw our driveway, it's a good 45-50degree angle that I really couldn't bring myself to park on, so they have to go on the road. Bloody kids. What irritated me the most is that they got a match by the blood sample, so the fucker'd obviously been in trouble before. I was considering small claims court, but then my ex-polis father in law reminded me my car would probably be in a much worse condition after they'd got the summons.

So is the fact they don't have the basic value of normal civilized humans that you don't break other people's shit.



Yup. DrG and I were amused to see the variety of items that people in your 'hood used as improvised chocks to keep their cars on the ludicrously steep driveways. I know that I'd be unhappy leaving my car on your driveway, I just don't trust the handbrake, even if I were to leave it in gear AND pump the brake pedal.

I've had the back quarterlight window smashed twice on my (ex-) car, months apart. It looked like they were trying to reach into the boot, but on both occasions the parcel shelf was out, and the boot was visibly empty. Weird. If they were just trying to vandalise it, why did they go for the smallest, cheapest window? Useless scrotes can't even break shit properly.

Quarterlights are normally among the most expensive, because they are an odd shape. The cheapest used to be the windscreen. Maybe it's all changed now, it's been years since I did some research into it.

Oh - well it was only about £60 for a new one.

J'ACCUSE!

I think there might be some sort of 'break stuff so that it's broken and annoying but in a really minor way that you won't really get done for' mentality behind stuff like this.

I'd love to see what the guys behind the broken windows theory would say about the whole chav vandalism thing. After all, chavs aren't spraying or breaking stuff for any good reason - you think if you keep repainting, say, a tagged wall that they won't just keep coming back to re-tag it? No doubt they'd start waiting to see how long it would take you to give. So in other words, you have everything nice, they smash it, you fix it they'll just come back to resmash it again, ad infinitum.

This has frustrated me. Little shits can get away with murder. I was in the post office the other day and someone who claimed to be born in 1992 was applying for a driving license. This is where it is all going wrong!

The Chinny Proclamations:

1 - From now on anybody born after Jan 1st 1990 will be classed as a child and therefore underage.

2 - Everyone who isn't a "child" should be given a stun gun they can use once a month on the "children".

3 - "Children" should be in bed before 9. School day starts at 8.30am and finished as 5.30pm with only 4 weeks holiday a year. It'll prepare them for real life.

4 - "Children" should be seen and not heard.

5 - "Children" should not be allowed to be in "packs" of more than two in a public place.

6 - Anyone wearing sportswear with no intention of doing any sport should immediately be thrown in jail with no trial.

7 - Anyone wearing shiny shoes will be allowed to go straight to the front of the Post Office queue.

7b - Post Office staff will salute you and call you "sir" if you have the aforementioned footwear.

8 - Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft to be closed and all their assets to be handed to Amstrad who will become the official state computer and games console company. All consoles will now be sold with a monitor, and a cheaper green screen option will be available.

9 - Mario abolished and replaced with "Roland" an exciting new concept in gaming characters.

10 - Doctor Who is not allowed to be younger than me.

Remember vote Chinny in the next elections and I'll sort this country out. I'll stop the little bastards from denting your car or breaking your garage door and will make life better for you all.

Switch "child" for "OAP" and that list is perfect.

Fucking "tagging" winds me up. It's a shame you don't hear about more of them falling under trains when they "tag" bridges.

[feels the dot on the graph from earlier in the week suddenly moving right and upwards]

Fixed it. Had a drinkies. Nice New Zealand wine in offy at half price. Tres good. Hic.

they are cunts and you can only hope that this petty vandalism leads to them picking on the wrong bit of property and getting beaten to death by drug dealers.

my gf's car had it's wing mirror smashed two thursdays running about a year ago. I thought that was the start of some bollocks right there and so she parked it around the corner for a week or two but then stopped doing it and luckily nothing came of it.

Of course, every thursday I was dressed in a black hoodie ready to follow the culprit into another street and choke him to death.

Thankfully they just seemed to fuck off instead.

If there was no tagging, there'd be no "M Khan is bent". I couldn't live in a world without that.

Pavement side or road side? I've had my wing mirror smacked by people who can't fucking drive so many times I'm determined to spend the money to get folding ones next time.

Ditto. Whilst moving, most recently.

I honestly think that we're pretty much at the stage where that is the only thing we can realistically do to stop them.
Perhaps not choke them to death like, but I'd certainly speak out for Meaty if he gave the cunts a good fucking shoeing.

Mounties get stealth training, right?

Well as I said, in my case the polis went through all the rigmarole of sending a SOC out to take the blood sample and footprints, 2 lasses to talk to me and ring bells up the street, updates via phone to me, DNA test, "arresting", then let the little shit go with nowt to show for it. Except a higher crime index for my postcode meaning more in insurance costs for me. Fucking shit.

Gaaah. Fuckers.
I've become a bit nervous about this lately and installed a webcam thingy. As I'm out all day, but also rural, so anyone turning up to have a poke about / break in would tend to be in a car, and I'd hopefully get the plates.

Tuesday night I was treated to a real sideshow outside.

One of the local slappers had a party and about 30 teenage boys all showed up and drank too much. It must have been up the road, likes.

Any way, I heard all this yelling and went out to investigate. It was nothing but 16 y/o yobs all beating the fuck out of one another. What a treat sent from heaven ! I mean, all you want to see is these little shits hurt and they're there, in full living colour doing it to each other. Brilliant !

The woman from down the way went out (nosey old cow, mind you I can talk) and they gave her a mouthful. I went out and they said "owight mate?". Mind you, they've seen my friends (bodyguards, bouncers and generally large nasty black people).

Highlight of the evening was watching some cunt come bowling down the street screaming like a madman in his Ben Sherman, trip over and slide about 20 feet on his face. I don't think I've ever laughed so much in all my life.

Sadly the fun had to end and the police turned up.

I can recommend kit to do this, namely stuff from these guys:

http://www.rfconcepts.co.uk/digital-recorder.htm

I installed one at the inlaws after the theft of a ornamental roller. They had a PC based solution previously but the harsh reality is that a PC isn't reliable enough. On the day in question the PC had rebooted and the camera software hadn't restarted. I was furious and the PC was ditched.

We got the Avermedia 1304. It sits there and just works. Dead easy to use and stores months of footage. If the power goes as soon as it comes back it just continues recording.

Totally illegal unless you're registered with the DPA, of course - assuming it can see off your property.

The key is if it can see off the property. So you set it up so it can't.

I know of two more 'positive' police-versus-chav stories recently. So it's not all bad.

First. Guy who I went to school with (in his 20s), got stabbed in the neck one a few weeks back. Outside a mini Tesco across the road from my place. The group of teenage girls who stabbed him were thankfully caught on CCTV, identified by one of their number's school uniform and were all arrested. He's made as good recovery as is expected in the meantime.

Second. 10 year old kid I know was beaten up by a group of 16 year olds in a local park, and his bike was stolen. A bystander knew who the thugs were (they are all classmates or something) and helped said 10 year old, and later gave the names to the police. But! At the scene of the bike theft, the had thieves dumped a girl's bike which they had previously stolen - presumably it wasn't worth as much to sell on - the girl's bike was given to the police, who carried out forensic tests on it. The bike thieves were all arrested, and the 10 year old's bike was returned, albeit needing of reassembly.

He wasn't so bright, then?

LOL.

Sorry to hear that Metal Angel. Hope it gets fixed, fastest.

That's horrible to hear, hope you and Kate are feeling better about it this morning. x

I blame GTA for the bike thing.

Rebuild Offa's Dyke.

Sorry to hear it, Meaty.

Don't get me started on the uselessness of the Police, though. They told me they'd send someone round to do forensic tests on my bike when it was stolen last year. Didn't bother. A few weeks later, I got a letter through my door saying, essentially "We're now closing this case, as we have nothing to go on. Thanks!"

Useless cunts.

Garage guy is coming Monday to try and fix it. I'm now pissed off that it's a gorgeous weekend and I can't ride the bike into work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/mers ... 062957.stm

This happened about two minutes away from my parents' house. Suffice it to say that this soft-as-shite liberal pansy has been stuck in "get off my lawn" mode since.

Sometimes good things happen, though.

This says it all.

Why do they insist on putting thier hands down the front of their trousers? (sorry, i believe the term should be Trackies)
Are they checking to see if they have the balls to go out and earn an honest living??

How many people need to be involved for it to be 'gang' rape? Just three?

I think there has to be someone waiting their turn. So...er...five?

Sorry to hear that, MetalAngel. It's a horrible feeling to know that someone has forced their way into your space.

I was at home when two men broke into the flat. I heard them walk fast up the hallway to where I was in the bedroom. I was in the flat alone and the bedroom door happened to be shut. I grabbed the phone, sat against the door and braced my legs against the unit in front of me, hoping that I could stop them from opening the door to the room I was in, and I phoned the police. They did get in, saw me on the phone, said something like 'oops, sorry' and walked off back down the hall and out the front door. The police were there literally 60 seconds later but missed them, though I must say that they were wonderful, helpful, understanding and very careful to check up on me a few times later to make sure I was OK.

I didn't lose anything, but I did for those few minutes think that it was my end and that I would die. Thankfully I got the phonecall into the police which made them leave sharpish. It's a long time ago now, but it still gets to me sometimes.

Gah. Sorry to hear about that, chap - little fuckwits.

As un-PC as I'm sure it is but fuck it I'll say it anyway: thank goodness for big, fierce dogs. The finer points of 'duty of care' and 'public safety' are rather lost on my 55kg male Rottweiler and his 35kg English Bull Terrier sidekick. The clear warning signs on my 5-bar gate say it all; anyone coming into my grounds univited in the middle of the night would, quite literally, be torn to small, bloodied pieces.

I'm seriously considering a further Rottweiler heavyweight bitch to augment my impressive canine arsenal yet further still; a bitch is far more dangerous than a dog, when truly roused.

We got home at atupid o clock last night and went straight to bed with the bedroom window slightly open as it was steaming hot out. I fell straight asleep, but the wife heard some giggling outside, and put her PJs on and looked out the window. The window was by now wide open.

Interesting to see if they were planning on breaking in. The unintentional alarm system of wooden slat blinds, and 7 pint glasses lined up on the windowsill, plus me on top of the duvet in all my glory should be more a deterrant than the ploice ever could be.

I'm coping with the feeling of violation and such better than I'd have expected. I'm not nearly as anxious as I thought I'd be (and the feeling has passed a lot quicker too)

Sorry to hear about your problems, Meems, that would have freaked me out practically forever. To this day I have OCD about checking the doors are locked because I keep having visions of some tracksuited goon suddenly appeared in the doorway while we're watching TV.

I can't really blame my area as it's not that - my parents live in a pretty darned posh area (AL1 postcode) and both neighbours on either side of them have been broken into, while the elderly neighbour on the one side is currently subject to an ongoing campaign of intimidation and such from a group of pikeys who have spilled paint on his driveway, smashed part of his roof and then come back to say 'we're contractors, we can hose your driveway/repair your roof.' This is on top of the old 'can my mate have a glass of water' trick, and them actually robbing his house the one time he foolishly employed them (to legitimately replace his driveway).

That's awful. My sister was feeding one of her friend's cats while she was away sometime last year, someone broke in while she was there, she was about to call the police and he grabbed the phone off her and ordered her to stay in the living room while he set about robbing the place. She also feared for her safety and ended up throwing a chair through the window (luckily a ground floor flat although she reckons she'd have done exactly the same thing if it was the first floor) and climbing out after it screaming, luckily the neighbours all came out and the bloke just ran off. She's not generally very easily rattled having lived in all sorts of places all over the world but it did really scare her.