I know I should be creeped out by it, but I’m not.

Instead I’m just a bit grumpy.

You see I’ve been robbed – “home invasion” style.  I realise now the difference between a straight burglary and a home invasion is that in the second instance, you are present, even though you may be sound asleep and miss the whole thing.

Last week sometime, in the wee small hours, an enterprising thief hopped my back fence – they must have been a bit heavy I think because the gate is rather hard to close now. They were cluey enough to let my faithless Blue Heeler spy freedom through the open gate and rather than make a racket he made tracks – probably visiting his girlfriend around the corner, any excuse to get jiggy with it.

Anyway they opened a window and just climbed in – took my bag and my backpack containing my laptop (my love, my life – sad but true) from the kitchen and then, even more gamely, ventured further into the house and stole my car and house keys and wallet from the hall table – a logical place for them to be found – so the thieves did just that.

They left the house the way they came in and drove off with my car and the booty.

The fact that I slept soundly through the whole thing has left me with a sense of guilt …or is it shame …I’m not sure but it is as though I did something stupid by being asleep at night time.

So many people have just been open-mouthed at the fact that I didn’t wake up.

“So you didn’t hear a thing?” they query.

“You didn’t hear them drive your car away?”

“You didn’t sense their presence?”

Well I don’t know about you, but when I finally go to sleep – I sleep.

When it rains hard on my roof I don’t wake up. When the dog has a woof in the garden I sleep on through it. I even slept through the supposed earth tremor we had a month or two ago. Isn’t that what sleep is all about?

I mean the only time I have been sensitive enough to wake up at the slightest sound is when I had my baby and I think that is some sort of special child centric hormonal aberration. It lasts until they are teenagers when worry about whether or not they are still breathing in their teeny pink or blue grow suit, turns into worry about how drunk they might be, who is driving and if they have been smart enough to come home in a cab.

So I don’t believe there is a “wake up there is a burglar in the house taking your stuff” mechanism and I am grateful for that. I mean imagine waking up and seeing them in the hallway – then I would be creeped out.

Would  I have come marching out of bed all wild haired and groggy in my jim-jams and said….”Stop it – its mean!” or  curled up quivering under the covers hoping they would leave. Who knows and either way I think it would have been a health hazard.

What it has done though is make me annoyingly aware of the vulnerability of living alone.  The fact that I fell off the ladder a weekend later has done nothing to soothe this anxiety – I mean had the fall been worse, it might have been days before someone found me – stuck to my paving, doused in thick layers of congealing “Smooth Cream” paint, legs tangled in a most ungainly fashion around my reclining ladder – a little too tragic to contemplate.

What’s the answer? Well I don’t know but in a society where older singletons are on the rise, it is something to think about. What happens to all those divorcees, and career gals and guys who never found “the one”?

Years ago they might still have been welcomed into the bosom of a loving family but you know what, today everyone is just too busy. You might once have had a sister or sister-in-law who stayed at home and looked after the kids or a mother or father or granny who was happy to spend time with you.  Today they are likely to be juggling a job and motherhood and mum and dad or granny and grandpa are either off in a mobile home exploring the world or have taken up residence in a resort style retirement village – no straggler relatives allowed.

Part of me still thinks it might be possible to meet the man of my dreams to share good times, hearth and home invasion with – I can imagine him whistfully.

And then my mother kindly offers a much more practical suggestion – there is a new service you can sign up to where someone just gives you a quick phone call every day to make sure you are still alive.

Must get the number…

PS: the thieves conveniently parked my car about four km from my home – they just forgot to leave a note to tell me where it was. No matter me and my little “tardis”, complete with sound system are gratefully reunited. Oh but as they have stolen a whole host of items that are key to my identity – if anyone tells you they are me – treat them with suspicion!