What some people get up to on a windy night....

And there it was - gone!

As we had a 5 hour power cut at work on Monday, I decided that now we had power at Brookvale I could collect the generator I had bought and use it as an emergency supply for work. On arriving at Brookvale early Tuesday morning there were lots of people on telephones and a general lack of action. Gary, one of the groundworkers, explained that some "bast***s" had nicked the digger during the night. It appears that "they" managed to start the digger without keys, drove it round to the back of the house, demolished a tree to create a gap in the hedgerow, and then at the less than rapid pace of 1 mph (the digger's top speed), set off on a 3/4 mile trip across fields (the tracks clearly visible) until they reached a driveway, where, presumably, they put it on a low loader and roared off into the night. No-one at Brookvale heard a thing!

"Still" said Gary "they won't get far. Its got a Tracker fitted". After my return to work I conjured up the image of the police chasing the digger at 1 mph; the Tracker beeping away furiously and the villains being arrested. My thoughts then turned to insurance. Who was responsible? Would it be us? At £5000 for an 8 year old digger, it would be a lot of money. Suppose the insurance company wouldn't pay out? The 'phone rang - it was Roy, the project manager. He had spoken to the police and they just weren't interested. Worse still, when the Tracker was switched on - zilch, zero, nothing at all. Either it was faulty of it had been found and smashed. Goodbye mini digger.

The annoying thing was that we had almost finished with the digger - just one more day's work!

Jan & Rog