Paranoia
Hmmm you just start thinking that things may be starting to go your way and something goes a bit pear shaped.
Today was the day I’d been looking forward to for weeks, I knew that work was going to be really hard for ages, so I resigned myself to knuckling down and concentrating on getting things done and trying not to think about how long it was going to go on for. Anyway audit done, PPM done, capital item and software bids done, photocopiers nearly done, a zillion jobs done and now my week of holidays. A big birthday next week and the promise of a few beers too, I’d even given up on booze for two months as I knew the workload would be so hard that I thought I should go on the wagon on have all my faculties in place while leaning out of the wagon’s window.
Got in from work this evening and I noticed that the coal house door was open.
Didn’t think anything about it, the door is tricky to close and it might have just blown open.
Got in nothing out of place, got the washing started, got the fire on, made some boiled eggs and soldiers and sat in a chair, had a scoff and promptly nodded off. Woke up and couldn’t make my mind up what to do, it was strange as the reason for my dilemma was that it was cold, but hang on the fire was on, the heating was on, what was going on. The penny didn’t drop, I got on with working and when I was in the utility room it suddenly dawned on me that the heating wasn’t on. I did the usual restarts and then I checked the tank, the tank was dry as a bone.
Now normally I would just have thought that I’d ran the tank dry, but the coal house door being open, hmmm I smell a rat.
The thing about my house is that on moving in the tank filler cap was broken off, this suggests the place has a history of fuel theft. Also the house had been broken into while it was vacant so I think we’re getting a pattern here.
My back yard is a very sheltered, the tank cannot be seen from the road, the tank is raised so it is a syphoning paradise and one can easily just walk around the back of the house unhindered by gates or walls. I get the feeling that I’m an ideal target too as anyone who knows me knows I live alone and that if my car isn’t on the drive then the petrol station is open. It’s generally accepted too that anyone has carte blanch to go around the back of my house as the post box isn’t in the front garden but is in my back door and also the parking outside the front of my house is getting out of hand so anyone parking at the front with a van full of empty jerry cans wouldn’t create too much of a suspicious scene.
Thing is too that people do chat and the amount of people who’ve been in and out is quite a throng now. I know that I upset a delivery man once – a man I once caught with a foot in my front door once when he found it open and I hadn’t answered quickly.
You see though the real problem with all this…
I reckon that although I bought my fuel in January and I reckon that there’s a good 50:50 chance that I’ve just ran out of fuel the problem is that the simple open coal house door being open now makes me think that I’ve been robbed.
Look at the paragraphs above and you’ll see what these two simple things have done to my mind. The fuel running out, the door being open and there you go rampant paranoia.
There is one thing though, if I have been robbed then I’m in a sticky spot. This sticky spot being that unless I change things I now cannot buy any more fuel. This risk has to be balanced against whether I seriously think I’ve had my fuel stolen. If I have been robbed and I buy more fuel then I seriously risk having £300 of fuel disappear overnight. I cannot afford this. On the other hand I do not want to go back to the bad old days of getting up in the freezing cold every morning, it really is a problem.
It could be just that I’ve run out of fuel and I have to recognise that heating a big old house is expensive.
I do have the thermal store and the fire ready to go but it’ll take weeks to get the roof shored up before I can then go ahead and take the store upstairs and commission it. I will still need fuel though as a backup to the system when the fire isn’t on.
I can move the tank, I can bury it in the ground, I can hide it in a room. These methods at best are good security measures but at worse they are expensive deterrents that only make the criminal more frustrated and committed to damaging your tank in order to get at your fuel.
Again though have I really been robbed and am I just being panicky.
I do now have a full burglar alarm system in the house and that’s good to know that at least my house is quite secure from anyone who might just try the opportunist dip into my pocket from a new angle.
Not happy at all and I was so looking forward to this evening.