Home Security

Over the last couple of years, I’ve walked round the village fairly frequently, just for extra exercise (and also, you know, why not?)

Over the last couple of days (the days between Christmas and New Year, which I saw someone call “the festive perineum”, which amused me more than it should have) while doing that route, it’s made me think about just how easy people make it for potential burglars, just by advertising that they’re not home.

No lights, curtains open, even stuff left outside the door.  It’s really quite gobsmacking.

After all, it’s not like time-switches are rare (or expensive) – they’re the easiest thing to use to at least make a house look occupied. Yet even that simple thing seems to be beyond so many people. I (kind of) get it, if you’re in 355 nights out of the year or whatever, that it might not be something you bother with. But it’s not like the Festering Season comes as a surprise – and if you know you’re going to be away, why not spend a tenner and at least get a couple of timeswitches so you can put on a radio/TV and a light?

Maybe (hopefully) these people have never had a break-in, have never known that icky feeling that someone else – someone uninvited – has been in your home, has gone through your things. Let alone that that person has then taken some of those things, and you have to figure out just what has gone.  I hope that’s the case, but it’s still no excuse for being complacent about it (in my opinion) and leaving oneself open to the chance of that happening.

It’s no excuse for complacency, but then, people so rarely seem to need an excuse to think “It’ll never happen to me”. Until it does – and then it’ll be everyone else’s fault.