It's looking good. I've spent most of today and yesterday in a rather stupid state, getting myself all wound up in case the guy came back. As I said to Shaogo earlier, my partner didn't realise that last night he slept next to a crudely armed man, and for good reason. How embarrassingly pathetic is it - to take a carbon-fibre walking pole to bed with you for fear that someone might break into the house for revenge and attack you while you slept? I guess a naked XWiz waving camping gear might put some people off, but probably not the type of imaginary attacker who's taken the trouble to break into the house. I did take the plastic end off that stops you sinking into marshy ground, so it was kind of very-nearly-pointed.
It's stupid, I know; my irrationality has no end, sometimes. I knew it was stupid even while I was doing it, which is why I hid it from Andy. And then I spent most of today feeling like a victim, which is also stupid, so I realised it was time to do something about it. I wrote a nice letter to the landlord asking him to sort out the security lighting on the side of the building. I'm crafting a very, very nice letter to the landlord of the pub next door to ask him if he would consider discouraging patrons from using the side of our house as a urinal. It's very, very nice because we actually like going in the pub, it's just they do have a perfectly good toilet facility inside. And finally I telephoned the police station to find out what was happening; I couldn't sit round any longer not knowing.
At first, the policeman said, Mr R denied it. He had his solicitor and denied everything, leaving it my word against his. And thus it was left. The chap I talked to asked how I felt about that, and I said that all I really wanted was to be left alone. I don't want to go to court, I don't have an axe to grind, I just want to be left alone, and even if nothing happened then at least now Mr R knows I'm not into putting up with it.
But there's more, said the chap on the other end, and this bit was so much better. When dropping Mr R back home the policeman said he'd had an up-front, man-to-man chat with Mr R and told him he knew he was lying and that he suggested Mr R reconsider. He told him he was sure he was lying, that it was clearly linked to the earlier incident that went to court and that he'd get witnesses from the pub and find out what really happened. Sounded good to me on the phone, anyway.
The upshot was that about 45 minutes before I got itchy fingers and made my call to find out what was happening, Mr R had called back and said he needed to see the police again. His memory had returned, the policeman said. Apparently seven pints of Magner's cider can do that to you. (As well as bring out latent homophobia, too.)
Apparently he's getting a conditional caution. That is a standard, recorded caution, a sort of official slap on the wrist, with conditions attached to it. The conditions, I believe, will relate to me and my property. Any transgressions over the next five years and it all goes to court where they'll be made aware of the story so far and Mr R can expect slightly more than eighty hours of community work. Big sighs all round, here. I've been so worried... so stupidly, verge-of-tears worried.
Thank you to everyone for the messages. It's all been a tiny little bit of drama in a great big macrocosm of life, I know, and there'll be worse things happen to me in the future, and worse things happening to someone, somewhere right now. But just for this past few days, life's been pretty worry-filled, and every sympathetic message in the catbox has helped me feel just that bit better. Thanks.
Okay, group hug officially over now - back to the grindstones, everyone! | 
