My Name is Gary, or: Karma, of a Kind

Well, I just came home to find the security doors beyond my actual front door forced open, but whoever did it obviously got disturbed because they stopped there instead of trying to work their way through the actual front door (I live in a block of flats; there are three barriers to you getting in - the building entrance, the storm doors on my property, and another front door inside of that. The latter two have mortice locks, along with the more conventional Yales). They were very nice storm doors too, and clearly weren't so cheap to install; now they're all ripped up, with the mortice lying on the ground next to it.

The good news, of course, is whoever did it didn't actually get into the house; almost certainly they got disturbed and split, quite possibly very shortly before I got home. Even if they had got into the house, well, there's always the insurance (and all the story files are backed up onto my google account).

In the meantime, I just spent half an hour on the phone to the cops, who told me to bag the ripped-out mortice lock without touching it with my bare fingers, and leave it aside for when they turn up tomorrow morning.

Here's the bit where I start to believe there really is such a thing, however, as karma, of a kind:

Every Tuesday, people leave out the big items of rubbish to be taken away by the council cleaners, on the street outside the building. This of course includes stuff like couches, tables, whatever. And tumble dryers.

When I moved in, a friend - Helena - very kindly lent me very long-term her washing machine: it's still living here. Unfortunately, it only washes clothes - it doesn't dry them. So for ages and ages I've been thinking I should really, really get around to getting a dryer so we don't keep having to hang stuff over radiators and so forth. So when the new book deal came around, I thought, time to buy that dryer.

So there I am, on my way to the corner shop for my dinner, when what do I see but a tumble dryer waiting with other rubbish, and barely a scratch on it, just around the corner? Surely it doesn't work, otherwise why throw it out?

Yeah, sometimes I'm that naive. So I thought fuck it, lifted the damn thing - carefully - and carried it into the house. The first good sign - the instruction manual, inside the cylinder! And of course it came on straight away. Sure, it could blow up in twenty-four hours or something - but I'm going to be marginally optimistic, just for once: in fact, today has been my lucky day.

1: My house didn't get broken into - just nearly. And I have insurance.
2: I found a tumble dryer abandoned in the street, and it works just fine.

So there you go.