Weekend (Part 1): Broken glass in the moonlit hall

It's odd that the week I decide to start a blog I'm given an abundance of material to work from. A trip out of town, a mystery crime and the (sometimes irritating) antics of friends. Without further ado let me present my weekend.

I came to the end of an uneventful day of work on the friday. My plans for the weekend were to head down to Birmingham to meet up with friends, one of whom was celebrating a birthday. While I normally pop home to shower and change before catching the train an odd set of circumstances forced me to catch an earlier service. This necessitated heading straight from work to the station, naturally I brought the stuff I was taking with me to work and changed clothes before leaving.

Unfortunately I'd forgotten one rather key item. My phone.

I'm normally good at remembering it but for some reason I'd left it charging on my desk that morning, the one day I actually needed to take it into work with me. Suffice to say I was a bit panicked, being without a phone in this day and age makes a weekend with friends difficult to manage. It's at this point my Dad (who is driving me to the station) chimes in with how in his day they did just fine without such things as mobile phones. Naturally I quip back with the logical counterpoint that if we didn't have phones we wouldn't be so reliant on them. It's not that we need them but because we're used to having them it's difficult to do without. Anyway I digress, thankfully my mum is a saint and came to drop my phone off at the station before the train set off.

I whittled away the dull train journey by watching One Piece on my iPod Touch. I only got it late last year but I already don't know how I managed before without such a handy PMP. The fact I can just waste time by watching TV anywhere is pretty astounding. It only takes a few episodes before I arrive in Birmingham, once there I buzz my friends to figure out where everyone is. As they're still on their way I decide to head down to the restaurant to get a table ahead of time. They say they're only about 20 minutes away. Rather typically I'm sat in the place for about half an hour before they show up. I've ordered by this point because the dish I normally have (chicken livers) takes them a while to prepare. A good thing too, even though my friends ordered about 5-10 minutes after I did I still was about the 3rd or 4th person served.

Like with the aftermath of most good meals we quickly transition to a drinking establishment afterwards. I should mention at this point that a situation with my friends girlfriend was what forced me to rush to the station from work. Thanks to this I managed to guilt trip a drink out of him before he rushed off to pick her up from the coach station. We don't stay long where we are before we head back to the train station to catch a train to the suburb where all my friends live. We continue the night out in a local pub for a while, the night growing old as the birthday boy recounts stories from his work as a prison guard as well as tales about a friends bizarre sexual escapades (the same friend who bought my drink earlier incidentally).

Eventually we call it and head to our respective accommodation. I was staying with a friend by the name of Louis so I trail behind him to his place. We were talking amicably until we reach the door upon which he becomes deathly silent. It takes me a few moments to cotton on to the fact that something is amiss and the focus of my gaze soon matches his. A pane of glass in the door has been smashed through. More specifically the glass directly adjacent to the door latch. After an unsettling examination of the door from the outside Louis is soon fumbling with his keys and the door is open. Glass is strewn across the hallway, the scatter makes it clear it was bust through pretty vigorously with only a few jagged shards remaining in the frame.

My friend is now frantically unlocking his room on the ground floor, anxious to check on his belongings. I squeeze past him to look at the living room, being a nest of consoles as well as a TV it seemed like the place that'd likely be hit hardest. I expected to see a barren wasteland, stripped of all value. I was pretty surprised when it looked like nothing had even been moved. The house had obviously been compromised so why was one of the prime targets completely ignored?

Confused as to this turn of events I follow Louis into his room, he's flitting about in a panic saying that someone has been in his room. Oddly enough his room is in a similar state to the living room, obvious valuables like laptops, computers etc. all remain in their usual positions. He's pointing out how his drawers have been rifled through and stuff has been knocked off his shelf. I try to make sure he's not just looking for ghosts and point out that the stuff could have just fallen off. While the front door was broken his room had been locked. It's at this point he grabs me and points to what is unmistakably a dirty black footprint on the window sill.

Ah.

I remember at this point that to prevent his room getting too hot Louis leaves the window open a crack. I've told him a billion times it's a bad idea to leave a ground floor window unlocked and open (especially when it's easily big enough for an adult to clamber through) but he just dismisses it with the reasoning that it's not visible from the road. Still it's pretty clear that someone has come through it and into the room.

By this point one of Louis's room mates has materialised. It turns out he's been asleep in his room the whole time and is only now learning of the break in. All of us are scratching our heads trying to figure out why someone would go to so much trouble to gain entry and leave everything of value in the house intact. It didn't make sense in the slightest. As the police are summoned I come up with the following theory:

1. One of the residents returned in a drunken stupor and was unable to gain access to the house.

2. Knowing that Louis leaves his window open they entered through there.

3. Upon realising that the door to the room is locked they begin to search the room for a spare key, stumbling around and bumping into stuff as they do so.

4. Once they figure out there's no way out they go once more through the window and break the glass on the front door to get inside.

It seemed pretty plausible at the time and was a lot more logical explanation than a burglar breaking in and taking nothing. The only problem was that the only house mate whose whereabouts were unknown was unlikely to have done such a think. Despite this the police were hesitant to record it as a crime until the last resident was questioned, especially since nothing was taken. The case was getting curiouser and curiouser so we gave up on thinking about it and went to bed.

Next up: Rude awakenings, wonderland and more police action.