The Crime Situation

Last night in Ringwood crime struck closer than ever before in my 50 years. At least, that is, if one discounts the fellow who felt that my leaving a PC in the boot of my Golf in Umhlanga was an offer to share.

At 1:50 am we awoke to the sound of our new neighbour revving his Bentley Continental GT at an unseemly volume. He then reversed into the road, removing the brick fencepost at his gate. Not content with that, he drove straight back into said fencepost and demolished most of the brick wall. Two tons of Bentley will do that to most things. And then he hopped up the road at high revs and low skill. We heard him for miles.

What to do? The man was obviously under the influence. This area is home a to a bunch of disreputable people of the ilk of Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits infamy, that pirate Johnny Depp, and the lead singer for some crowd called Take That. Lord knows what they grow in their gardens for home consumption.

Just as I was ready to call 999 (the local emergency number) and suggest that they might want to chase a Bentley, our hero came out of his house in his pyjamas. I’ll say one thing for these English folk: They’re not good at handling crime.

Turns out that a 15 year old feral (local name for a young person that feels entitled to your possessions, covers his head with the hood of his tracksuit top, and is not appreciative of the government’s attempts to give him an easier life than his coalmining parents had) and his two 17 year old handlangers had felt the need for a midnight jaunt. (We discovered this much later after the event was covered on national TV because not too many Bentleys are borrowed in this manner)

The police eventually forced the car off the road about 20km away, and since it weighs two tons the car demolished an entire orchard before bouncing off an ancient Oak under which King Henry VIII is rumoured to have dreamed of new wives.

(I made up the part about the king, I am afraid, but it is quite possible given how old everything around here is, including me.)

The car eventually came to rest upside down and burst into fire in a manner beloved of Hollywood scriptwriters, but not before it demolished 3 police cars. (The story is here, without the video of my first appearance on the BBC as a bemused neighbour.)

Anyway, last night that was all in the future. Our hero (my neighbour) is a wonderful gentle man who discovered that the footpad had invaded his home and relieved him of his wallet, laptop, and Blackberry.

And that, dear friends, is why you need to back up your essential data! It’s not about the car, although losing R1.4 million of Bentley has got to hurt a whole bunch. (I feel that anyone with evil intentions towards my 1999 Opel/Vauxhall Astra 1.6 needs it much more than I do so I am not too concerned about my own car.) It’s about the information that you lose if somebody takes too much liking to your laptop. Cars can be insured, and most of us do. Data can be insured, but most of us don’t.

If you want to be an expert on backing up your PC, Wikipedia has a fascinating page that shares far more than you want to know about the subject. BUT, it’s critical to your future. You will find the article here. And then, for heaven’s sake, do something to protect your accounting, client, sales, production, and other business information.