This is England

Thank you to everyone who commented or sent emails calling the people who broke in fun words like "assholes" and "fuckers". I knew there was a reason I loved you all.

We were not broken into today, so we have made it one full week without someone kicking in our door and taking our stuff. Rock on. Who knows, we may even make it months, MONTHS without having to get a new laptop! I have carefully labelled all of our electronic gear with an ultraviolet pen, as advised by the police officers who came to take the report. Incidentally, they kept referring to our bedroom as the "crime scene", as it was made a mess of with jewellery strewn everywhere, wardrobes opened, and bedside cabinets emptied. Do not think it escaped my notice that our bedroom, once the site of Bataan Death March sex, and more recently, no sex at all, was frequently referred to as a "crime scene". No shit, officer. No shit.

Shaken as I was by this (btw, my apologies for my post-break-in post, because hello, h-i-s-t-r-i-o-n-i-c), it made me think further on why I have said numerous times that I don't want to raise P in this country. That is not to say that one burglary has convinced me to bribe a Canadian immigration official to expedite our residency application, but it's just another nail in the coffin of England, which, let's face it, would probably just get nicked anyway.

I want to raise P in a place that does not have people pissing in the middle of the street at 2pm. I want her to be able to play in the park without hearing dimwitted chav mothers telling her 4 kids under the age of 8 to "Shut the fuck up". It would be nice for her not to see drunks stumbling down the street at midday, or loud-mouthed louts walking around with cans of Stella clutched in their hands at all hours, night and day.

When The Dude came home to find our splintered door, he was very un-Dude. Normal Dude would flip out and book the next flight to the US and just stay there until Canadian residency was granted, but this Dude was totally zen. He said, "Everyone gets done once!", with a casual nature that is so unlike The Dude that I'm inclined to think he has been replaced with a pod person. It's sad that Pod Dude, being English and all, thinks that being burgled is just a part of life. I grew up in white bread, all-American, middle class suburbs, and I couldn't tell you of anyone I knew growing up whose house had been broken into. Middle class ignorance, middle class bliss.

Ever since having P, I'm all about living in a sequestered community. Throw up a big old gate, I'll hide behind it with my family. Perhaps tellingly, I initially typed "from" my family. Either way, I'm not opposed to the gate. This does bother me, liberal, hippy leftie that I am. Parenting is making me want to hide my child from all the bad people, and even the mildly bad people. Let me stress, not poor people, just naughty people. I plan on raising her to be directly involved with charitable causes, because she needs to know how fortunate she is. My mom used to make us spend our Easter Sundays serving up dinners at the local homeless shelter, and aside from the one time when a man in his 50s told my 14 year old self that he wanted to get between the sheets with me, I enjoyed it.

I know I can't shield her forever, which is why I want to do it when she's young. It's not like I want to keep her so isolated that she's like a kid stumbling out of the woods after living with one of those Mormon-like cults in deepest Utah, but I want to heavily censor her reality. Is that weird? As I say, I feel like I'm deeply betraying my liberal leanings - wanting to run away from the problem rather than help.

My mom always warned me that you get more conservative as you age. Am I turning into Pat Buchanan? Now, if you'll excuse me I must go polish my rifle.