Spike in crime figures

I've often thought we'd be dead easy to do over ... but that it would never happen. I've grown rather blase, wandering about with great wodges of other people's cash in my hands. Perhaps I've overestimted the common sense of the people I live and work amongst - after all the entire building is usually* subject to blanket security camera coverage.

This is such a dead-end place it doesn't even merit a pier (though the next town down the coast has one) or a row of those hideous tat 'n' tacky post card stalls. Then yesterday the card and trophy shop over the road from my home was held up by a couple of numb-nuts. The perpetrators were either sad out of towners who thought there might be something worth committing an armed robbery for in this town, or a couple of local yokels who've never been far enough afield (like the nearest town worth the title) to know better. Personally I favour the latter: a couple of opportunistic home-grown pot-heads out to make a quick quid.

An armed robbery less than a couple of hundred metres from my front door isn't funny. There are very, very few advantages to living here; freedom from fear of serious crime was supposed to be one of them.

The Big Swinging Dick's reaction to news of an armed robbery less than a mile away from his own little retail empire was a succinct and expressive "Fucking Hell!". I hope that the Handmaiden was present to soothe the savage little beast's fevered brow.