Eugene van Meteren Luckily we don’t get many break-ins or intruders. We at Idealis often remind residents of the need to lock their rooms and houses when they go out. Like we were doing one sunny spring morning.
My colleague from the social management side and I made the rounds of a load of student houses to distribute flyers saying ‘Watch out: a burglar could have entered here’. We put them in window sills by reaching through windows left open when no one was home. At one point I slowly and cautiously slunk towards a house like a predator approaching its prey (don’t ask me why). I glanced around to check that no one was watching me.
‘I am afraid I am committing a burglary,’ I said sheepishly
Pushing aside some branches of a large bush, I saw that the lights were off in the room with the open window. The house looked deserted. Flyer in hand, I reached through the window and tried to deposit it on the desk. But the desk was just too far away so I wriggled a bit further into the room, asking myself: ‘Eugene, what on earth are you doing?’ At that very moment, a Spanish woman (who I know, luckily) walked into the room and looked me in the eye indignantly. ‘Eugene,’ she said, ‘what on earth are you doing?’
‘I am afraid I am committing a burglary,’ I replied sheepishly. It was a good job we knew each other, and we had a good laugh. Meanwhile, I tried to back out of the window so I could conduct a normal conversation, but I didn’t realise a loop on my jeans had caught on the windowsill.
I was so glad my colleague from social management – still looking on from the garden – was there to help me out of this sorry plight.
Once I was standing outside again, I said we wanted to prove to residents that it was very important to lock everything carefully. She totally understood that, and complimented Idealis on our concern for out tenants.
