Götterdämmerung

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

John Keats: ‘Ode to a Nightingale’

I don’t know about nightingales, but the opening lines of Keats’s poem certainly sums up how I am feeling right now. On the face of it, it’s only property we lost, inanimate objects. We’re insured. Nobody got hurt. But things just seem to be spinning out of control right now after our break-in on Monday morning, and it looks as if we really lost a good deal more than just property.

We got patched up sufficiently to re-open on Tuesday, but when Heather woke she had a splitting headache.She had not slept all night and the thought of having to deal with customers out in the shop just caused her to break down. The rest of us would cover for her while she sat out the back and made out the insurance claim

I was pretty shaken by the whole thing too. Well, who wouldn’t be? We were woken by the sound of our front door being bashed in and we knew straight away what it was but what can you do? I was hardly going to run downstairs stark naked and ask them politely to desist. We were on the phone to the police even as they were ransacking the place. Within two minutes they were gone again, they knew exactly what to go for.

I thought I had things pretty much under control until, about halfway through the day, I committed the one transgression which is absolutely inexcusable if you work in a business which deals with the public: You must never, ever, no matter what the provocation (and, heaven knows, in this case there was provocation enough) lose your rag and have a stand-up row with a customer. I did, there were other customers in the shop at the time, I propelled Heather back into the office so as to keep her out of the situation, where I have never laid hands on her before. One of our assistants was so shocked by the whole thing she phoned in sick this morning, I didn’t sleep all night and I can hardly bring myself to look my beloved in the eye.

I know I crossed a line here, or several if the truth be told, I suppose I didn’t realise how deeply the recent events had traumatised me, or perhaps I thought I could just tough it out until the memory of it somehow faded, but something inside me just snapped and I don’t know how, or if, we are going to undo the things that are done.

OK, we have had break-ins before and ridden them out without problems, but this one was altogether different: The brutal, clinical efficiency with which it was carried out; the feeling of helplessness from being a spectator from an upstairs window and not being able to do a thing about it; the illusion that the new security measures we put in place when we rebuilt the business would be enough to deter any potential raids as not being worth the effort being shattered due to them being incorrectly installed.

We had gone away on holiday on a high: Just a few days before, we had been going over the annual figures with our accountant and he was pleased to report that we had the best result we have ever had, with the first quarter of this year looking equally good. We returned from holiday refreshed and relaxed and optimistic but that seems a very long time ago now.

We’re booked in to see a psychotherapist for crisis counselling, something else covered by our insurance. I just hope it will help to get things back to the smooth-running way they once were.



Sorry if this seems like a protracted whinge. I’ve got so much else I want to post about but I just can’t get the words down at the moment, this bloody thing is standing in the way.