Thanks ...

[tamaranth]

... thanks to everyone who posted messages of sympathy, offers of help etc. They are very much appreciated.

Does anyone have a Visor Neo or Deluxe for sale or know where I can get one second-hand? A wonderful friend is loaning me hers for the weekend ...

I've cannibalised a Walkman from the remains of the current one and its predecessors, which may not sound important, but is.

The thing is, my subconscious mind is talking me towards the conviction that my attackers were the kids who hang around at the DLR station. Which means I will have to walk past them most evenings. Which means that they probably do know where I live.

At the moment I'm scared of the thought of going outside. And that makes me really angry: I am not going to rearrange my life around the threat of a gang of snot-nosed teenagers.

Comments

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Question -- did you report this to the police, and did they give you a crime number? No idea what your insurance policies cover but you might be able to get something towards a ned PDA.

Secondly, your local police station (the term is of course relative) should be able to point you towards the local Victim Support group (and if they can't, there is something badly wrong in the state of Greenwich) who ought to be able to provide you with some useful coping strategies. (Victim Support is not always perfect - when we were burgled, they popped round, helpfully said 'well, there are two of you so you'll be alright' and cleared off - but they're usually a lot better than our experience would suggest.)

M.

[fishlifter.livejournal.com]

Was the stuff insured? And have you checked with your bank and credit card company to make sure transactions haven't gone through before you cancelled? You shouldn't be liable for that -- but having a crime number does indeed help in all these cases.

Otherwise: would contributions to a Visor fund be a good thing for us to give you for Christmas? (Early, if necessary.)

Is it worth trying be-at-peace-with-everything-but-also-know-how-to-defend-self martial arts as well/instead? (I say this having no application to do either, despite knowledge that it would be good for me in all sorts of ways.) Or were there too many muggers for this to have helped at all? Still, it might help with restoring your confidence, and I know how important it is to you to be able to go out and walk where you want.

And I agree about telling the police. Tell the council as well: they all keep going on about installing CCTV for our protection, so if there wasn't a camera watching you (and if there aren't cameras at the station) maybe there should be.

This is all intended to be helpful; apologies if it's stating the obvious, totally impractical, stuff you've already done or annoying in other ways! Email me here if you want to at all (I won't be emailable at home until Sunday).

[facter.livejournal.com]

hiya...i've decided that yr journal is interesting...h0h0. I'm a gunna add u to my friends list :)

I was walking down oxford street not too long ago, when some guy tried to put his hands into my laptop bag when I was looking the other way...there was some Small Expensive Stuff in there and it ended up ina major disagreement right there in oxford street...the cops came and he ran away, but not before scaring the shit out of me (he was a Big Person)....

...fuk the stupid kids, and if you see em again...well,t hats what a tazer is for :) hehe...

WSS

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

You should be able to claim on insurance, surely?

::more hugs::

[latexiron.livejournal.com]

If it's any consolation, I'm sure I have a spare walkman (or six) you can have!

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I am fortunate enough never to have been attacked, but your post brought back my feelings of fear following our burglary last year -- which was very minor as these things go. The thing that unhinged me was the thought that there was nothing I could do to prevent people getting in if they really wanted to. Instead we did some basic damage limitation work -- like making sure that all our valuables were marked, photographed and so on. For several months afterwards I dreamt of being burgled regularly.

I was overwhelmingly angry and pissed off at the little toerag who nicked our stuff -- despite the fact that I know intellectually that I have a far more fortunate life than most criminals, and that the roots of crime go deep. But I was aggreived that somebody could so easily prevent me from feeling safe in my own home. I also felt guilty that we'd allowed it to happen -- and opened ourselves to the much greater risk that they now knew what stuff we had and would come back at a convenient moment and clean us out completely.

Worst was that my subconscious mind convinced me that they'd actually got into the house before I went to bed -- that I'd heard the sounds of movement while working on _Plokta_ (we had a houseful of friends and relatives staying at the time) and assumed somebody had come downstairs to get something -- and the fact that they saw I was up scared them off. But actually I have no evidence to support that.

Anyway, the point of this was that all of these feelings faded; in months rather than weeks. But we did recover, and I don't go to bed every night expecting to wake up and find we've been burgled. Except sometimes on Saturdays.

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

I agree that contacting a victim support organization would be useful. I don't think you want to be either scared or angry - though both emotions are understandable and worthwhile - but I think you need to decide what is the correct resolution to allow you to feel comfortable.

Take care.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Don't let fear of being cowed make you do things you actually don't want to do. I was mugged in London in circumstances that sound rather similar and decided the only thing I was happy with at the time (this was, ulp, c 17 yrs ago?) was going to a station where I could catch a cheap taxi home, rather than walking from the nearest station as i normally did - since I suspected, like you, that I had been trailed from that station and it could happen again. I don't know if it was the "right" reaction and like you, i was deeply unhappy about having my life disrupted by these f**ing bastards, and being seen to "give in" to fear. But it was what I needed to do for my own peace of mind at the time, to keep normal life ticking over. So I did it, till I made other choices (moving , and eventually moving out of London altogether.)

I did eventually, take self defence classes (as Claire suggests) and they also helped - but in the end you have to do what your own gut instinct tells you, and not beat yourself up over it.

Love
Connie