Morning:
9°c
We used to discuss schools and nannies.
Now the main topic of conversation among my friends is who got mugged and how.
Mostly talk dwells on the sheer chutzpah with which the crimes are committed.
It's not unusual to have teenagers go through a roster of their day's activities to which they add “Oh, and I got mugged on the way home” to the list.
The difference now is that we've got so used to it that we almost take it for granted — and I speak as someone whose car was carjacked and whose house was broken into, with us in it, listening to his every stumble.
When my husband chased the robber down the street, the dutiful police officer advised us to install even more expensive security.
He took one look at my watch and suggested I go without. What next? No clothes?
When my phone was stolen from my car last week while I tried to open my front door (the culprit later sniggered when I dialled it), I came to the conclusion that crime is so rampant that ordinary citizens like us have stopped even bothering informing the police (I certainly didn't).
Chief Superintendent Mark Heath of Kensington and Chelsea reassures me that 451 personal robberies were recorded in the borough in the past 12 months: that should calm me because that is statistically fewer than the year before. Perhaps they are in a different part of the borough from where I live.
The statistics also don't match our experience because the victims have developed immunity.
We just sit in our fortresses, hoarding our worldly goods with cameras and private security guards while assuming that every Sainsbury's unloading session could end in terror.
Even my middle-aged cleaner was mugged on her three-minute journey home — and she doesn't wear a watch.
The recession may make things even worse: personal robberies were up by 25 per cent in the UK as a whole last year.
Scotland Yard's acting second-in-command, Tim Godwin, recently said that the side-effects of our economic times were already being felt by the Met: “We will get an increase in areas of criminality such as retail crime and business crime,” he said. It trickles down to wanting your wallet.
Thus my son's 13-year-old friend was mugged by a five-year-old on a tricycle for his phone.
Just a few months before, a fellow mother at my son's school in sleepy St John's Wood was mugged for her Rolex in front of the school gates with all of the mothers watching.
“His face was completely exposed and there were security guards at the school opposite,” she said. “All he said was, If you don't take the watch off, I'll stab you.'
You could tell he really didn't care that there were dozens of witnesses.
One of the other mothers was even trying to pull him off.”
Last year I watched a large man get mugged from my upstairs window.
He swatted the teenagers off (they grabbed his wallet) then kicked his car in frustration. He gave the mugging about the same degree of response as receiving a parking ticket.
Though Chief Supt Heath tells me the crime in my borough is down overall by 12 per cent, I am not convinced.
Walking into my house backwards to make sure I won't be jumped on my doorstep is not relaxing — nor is paying to have the scratch marks (a Notting Hill custom) removed from my car every six months.
We get used to everything — but why should we? We should not be paying for more security — we should be picketing.
