Every cloud and all that

Daily Mail columnist Tom Utley is an old friend of Forest.

I first met him 24 years ago at Auberon Waugh’s Academy Club in Soho where Forest was sponsoring a series of soirées in a spartan smoke-filled room overlooking Lexington Street.

A lifelong smoker, Tom has attended many Forest events and we have presented him with two awards, one in 2005 at the Groucho Club, and another in 2022 at Boisdale of Belgravia.

In a recent column (March 22) he described how a burglar had broken into his south London home two days earlier and taken what he could while Tom and his wife were asleep upstairs:

Clearly it was a quick in-and-out job which couldn’t have lasted much more than five minutes.

But it was quite long enough to cause an enormous amount of anxiety, distress, inconvenience and expense.

I know what he means.

It’s a very long time since I experienced a burglary, and I too was living in south (east) London. However, although I was never in any personal danger, the cost in terms of peace of mind was surprisingly high.

Here’s what happened.

In 1987, to get on the property ladder at the age of 28, I bought a 25 per cent share of a large four-storey house in Camberwell.

We were there for two years before we had our first break in. The thieves had climbed over the wall at the back of the property and broken into the house via the kitchen which was in the basement.

We weren’t at home but eagle-eyed neighbours had spotted some unusual activity and called the police.

When I arrived home an hour later, blissfully unaware that the house had been broken in to, several policemen were in and around the building.

The policeman standing by the front door had to be convinced I was the owner but even when they were satisfied they wouldn’t let me in because they thought one of burglars might still be on the premises.

When they were satisfied no-one was there I was allowed in and I saw at once that a television and two video recorders had been taken which was annoying because I was director of the Media Monitoring Unit at the time and needed them for my work.

I was warned that one of the bedrooms - my bedroom - was in a bit of a mess with clothes on the floor and drawers pulled out, but when I had a look I had to confess it was like that when I left the house that morning.

After that we installed a sliding metal security gate to protect the double door in the basement, but a year later it happened again.

This time I arrived home, heard the sound of someone running down the stairs, and was gobsmacked when a hooded figure raced past me, out the front door (which was still open), and off up the road.

We think he got in through one of the less than secure sash windows, but nothing seemed to be missing so I must have disturbed him before he took anything.

In hindsight I’m very glad we didn’t meet further up the stairs because I might have inadvertently blocked his escape route and who knows what might have happened. (Like Tom Utley, I’m a writer not a fighter!)

In the five years I lived in Camberwell I also had my car stolen while I was on holiday. I replaced it and within weeks the spare wheel was stolen.

Thieves later broke in to the ‘new’ car by smashing the rear window but there was a fault with the engine and the thieves couldn’t get it started to drive it away.

Overall, though, apart from a much loved seven-year-old car that wasn’t worth much when it was stolen, I didn’t lose a great deal.

Unlike Tom’s family, I didn’t have the inconvenience of losing my wallet, bank card, driving licence, house keys, laptop and passport.

Tom also had both sets of car keys stolen which necessitated his beloved Merc being towed away to a place of safe keeping in case the robbers came back for it.

Nevertheless, it was several years before I regained complete peace of mind.

Two years after we moved to Edinburgh in 1992 I remember looking out the window of our top floor flat convinced that someone was trying to break into my car, and for several years I was on constant alert for anything suspicious.

Yesterday Tom described the many kind words and deeds that neighbours and even complete strangers have offered him and his family this past week.

He also mentioned that, as a newspaper columnist, there’s a part of him that welcomes the occasional domestic crisis because it gives him something to write about.

Even as a humble blogger, I can relate to that. Every cloud and all that!

PS. Before I moved to Camberwell I was renting a tiny studio flat in Ravenscourt Park between Hammersmith and Chiswick.

It was in the basement of a terraced house and one night, as I was sleeping, I was woken by the sound of someone trying to climb in through the sash window that I had left partly open to get some fresh air.

I was half asleep but I shouted as loudly as I could, with a few expletives thrown in for good measure. The intruder got such a shock he fell back, and ran away.

At the time it felt like a dream but it definitely happened. Honest!

Above: Tom Utley at the Forest Summer Lunch, Boisdale of Belgravia, July 2023