I once had my car stolen.

It was a horrible experience. First there is pure disbelief. You look and it's not there. You think you have parked it somewhere else. You look again. It takes a good while to get it through your head that it has actually been stolen!

There is a bit of an amusing aspect to this story. My little red Honda was a work car. I worked for a paper called the Otago Daily Times and my number plate was ODT 7 – so everyone knew who I was. That was great at times. Not so good if I was trying to blend in!

Anyway, it was early December or summer as we called it down under. I had popped into my office to collect something and left my keys in the ignition.

The amusing part of the story is that the local police were enjoying a family picnic at the next town.

Several of them saw my car and waved to “me”.

The good thing is, that when I reported it stolen they all knew the direction in which it had been travelling!

Anyway, the car was stolen which was bad enough. When the joyriders had finished with it, though, they rammed it between two lamp posts and it was completely written off by the insurers.

I was very upset. As I told a dear friend, it was all my fault for leaving the keys in the ignition.

She disagreed vehemently! It was my car, not theirs to steal. It didn’t matter if I had left the doors open, the keys in the ignition and the engine running.

The bad guy was the one who stole someone else’s property.

It is an interesting theory and, in a perfect world, I would agree. Mind you, if it was a perfect world we wouldn’t have to worry about theft and crime.

I am old enough to remember when we didn’t lock doors or windows in our cars or in our homes. You just assumed you would be safe.

We had two Scottish men staying with us in New Zealand once. They were still at home preparing to leave as I went to work.

They arrived at work a while later and cheerfully informed me that they had locked the back door and put the front on the latch.

Great! I didn’t even have a key and had to get one of the local policemen to break into my house for me. I got a lecture on keeping the house safe, but I still didn’t lock doors even after that.

In this country you have to – and it’s more to do with insurance than crime.

Both our front and back doors have deadlocks on them. I had never even come across those before excepting in books.

I read somewhere that if we were broken into and the deadlock was not in place, we would not qualify for insurance.

That is the exact opposite of my friend Stella’s point of view.

As far as the insurance companies are concerned, I have to prove I did everything I could to protect my property.

It is almost like we are the criminals, not the ones who come and take our stuff.

So here we go: I will protect my property and you will leave it alone.

If you do detect a weak spot, however could you just steal. At least that gives you something and is a bit more understandable. Do not take and destroy. What’s the point of that?