Nothing wrong with the Pug. I'm gloating instead.
On Monday morning I pulled into a tight space to make for an easy walk into the office. We have a pretty big car park since the site was once the home to a big slaughtering and meat packing company but still we all cluster our cars at the nearest point of entry to site. The tight space was the second best space on site and was tight because there was a Jeep a good 18" into it. The 205 being a lickle thing fitted into the middle of the marked space quite nicely.
When I left work I found I had a flat tyre on the front nearside so I dropped the spare from its underside cradle and found that in the last fortnight since I last checked it, that I'd obviously kicked up a stone at the *perfect* angle and snapped the valve stem. Driving a 15 year old car involves some reliability risks and I've got full blown recovery. The recovery driver turned up and found the dust cap on the ground beneath the tyre. He suggested blowing it up as the first possibility.
It took air and leaked none but there was an ominous bulge on the inside tyre wall. His recommendation was that he'd be happy for me to drive home as long as I didn't brake sharply or exceed 30mph.
While he was blowing it up our marketing director headed home. She had arrived at 1pm for a meeting and had seen a big bloke wandering around my car (she didn't know it was my car at the time) and had heard a hissing noise. She thought he was looking to find where a leak was.
I'd chucked my camera bag in the car in the morning when I left the house because the journey home recently has been particularly beautiful recently. When I got home I reached around to pick it up and found that it wasn't there. Panic. The camera is worth a lot more than double the value of the car.
The pics I had access to were the webcam and they were pretty poor since the recording interval is 5 minutes per still but were enough to raise suspicion at the time the marketing person said she'd heard the sound. The car next to mine jumped left and then vanished. Next stop was CCTV at the security lodge. The camera is at the very bottom of the the car park but was pointed in the right direction. A very grainy picture showed the guy arrive at his 4wd, wander around my car, let the tyre down, open the boot for quite some time and then head off. Everyone watching the footage said "That's a Jeep". Just below the spot the Jeep had been parked in on Monday, there was a Jeep.
At 3pm on Tuesday the Jeep driver left site. The CCTV was trained on his spot at maximum zoom. When he got there he very carefully checked his tyres. That would be a good thing for all of us to do but when the police arrived 10 minutes later they watched the footage and decided it was enough to grab him for. We'd had ample time and had taken a picture of the number plate so a PNC got a name. None of the companies on site recognised the name. The police were to go and arrest him that evening and recommended that if they failed that we had our security detain him if he tried to leave. We haven't got that kind of security.
I got to work this morning and.. "Houston we have a jeep". As the morning went on we found that Simon Daysh was an employee of Smart Solutions who move trailers around for a ditsribution company onsite. I couldn't get hold of Northants police and kept hitting the voicemail. With pretty much half the site informed I got caught by a call from the gatehouse telling me that his truck was back on site.
Knowing that he'd be heading to his car, I rang the police and headed to the distribution company and tried to ring them on the internal system to get some delay but I was too late. He was headed up to his car. I ran over with no plan and asked him to come to the reception building as 'there was a problem'. As he turned around on the hill he was walking up I discovered the slight problem I had. I'm 5'10 and weigh about 11 stone. He's 6'5" works out a lot and is about 19 stone of aggressive muscle. Courtesy of lots of people turning up in response to a feature of our phone system (silent text messages internally) to 'hang around' we kept everything defused for a while.
Just before the police arrived, the guy suggested that he needed to get home and that he'd drop my camera off with security in the morning. I suggested that it may be better if he discussed this option with the police and said nothing further. We hadn't even told him that we had him for breaking in to my car or why he was waiting to speak to the police.
A bit later today I took a phonecall from the police. My camera is now in Daventry and I can pick it up when I want. The self incrimination was bad enough that they assigned him a duty solictor who talked to the CPS solicitor. They deal bashed around and decided that they could take it to a magistrate same day. The magistrate art the end of session with no further input gave a £250 fine and a 6 month probation order. The wheels of justice ground too damned fast. Lovely, I get my camera back. I don't get my tyre paid for
Warwick