Despite living on a busy main road, with several pubs within a couple of minutes walk, I’ve found life here to be less hassled than living on an estate. I’m a week or two away from living in this house for ten years, but the the only crime I’ve come across has been:
– a couple of pubs with window related vandalism.
– a stabbing outside one pub.
– a road accident involving someone fleeing an altercation.

Now, these aren’t all exactly minor, and I’ve almost certainly mentioned one or two at the time, but only the last one could really be described as a reasonably serious crime. Well, it seemed to involve assault and robbery.

Last night, I woke (barely) around 3:45 (I’m guessing, since I didn’t check) and could hear a heavy duty truck engine outside. Assuming it was a rubbish collection, I dismissed it and nodded off again. I woke again just after four and could still hear the truck. Wondering why it was still there, I took a look out of the window. It was actually a fire engine. I jumped to the obvious conclusion that someone had had a minor fire – I’d not been woken by sirens. So I closed the window and climbed back into bed.

There was no obvious signs of any external fire damage to any of the houses in the street when I left for work this morning, so i put it out of my mind.

Until my second in command told me that the Police had called this morning, asking if we’d seen anything. Or heard the explosion. It seems that someone had poured petrol over a car in the street and set it alight. Strangely, there’s nothing about it on the Internet and it wasn’t mentioned on local news (unless I missed it).

Stuff like that just doesn’t happen around here.