"That was very professional."
Mrs Calgacus used to live in the noted English city of Newcastle (or Noocassell as the natives would have it).

She moved flat. Rather than stay in a poncey (ie nice) part of the city, like Jesmond, she took a room in a house in a "livelier" part of Wallsend.

So I hired a van to move all her stuff. I got to the Toon late on Friday. Met up with herself. And then drove out to house where she rented a room in the van loaded with all her furniture and stuff.

The owner was a petite twentysomething who got absolutely mortal every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. And whenever she did this, she'd pass out having locked and chained every single possible means of entry to the house regardless of whether La Calgacus was in or not. Many's the time ma cherie would spend hours hammering on the door in a vain attempt to wake the sleeping housemate.

Now, we didn't know this at the time so we rocked up in the van very late on Friday. La Calgacus goes to open the door. The chain's on. The windows are bolted shut. It's like a high-security green zone.

We ring the doorbell. No reply. So we hammer on the door for - oooh - an hour. No reply. We shout and scream through the letterbox. No reply. Then I get a big f*ck off slat from the bed out of the van, stand on the ground floor windowsill and start hammering at this lassie's first-floor bedroom window with all my might.

Picture the scene as the neighbours see it (apart from the big-time drug-dealer who lived over the road). There's a strange van parked outside the house of a young woman who lives alone. And there's a stranger man climbing up the wall, thumping on her bedroom window with a really big stick.

Ah, hello, officer. I was just, err... Get down? Yes, of course.

Mercifully La Calgacus is much better at dealing with the polis than me and persuaded them that we were not up to anything dodgy. They said they'd believe her if she could get the owner to corroborate her story.

Bit of a problem as we'd been trying for ages to wake her from the Land of the Newkie Dead.

They then observed that someone wanting to break into the house should smash a window in the garage with a nice big stick, reach in and open it from the inside. Not that they would suggest such a thing.

So that's what I did, cracking the pane in the bottom corner nearest the lock. Mercifully the drunken housemate was woken and duly slurred that she knew Mrs C.

As they left, one of the coppers nodded at the broken pane and said to me: "Very professional."

Thank God it was the right house.
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Thu 22 Sep 2005, 12:22, Reply)