Simon Hewitt Jones - The Violin Blog

Sep

27

Two Burglaries And A Police Escort

Filed Under Travelblog | 

It all starts at about 11.30am. I’ve arranged to meet a new student at the studio for a lesson. We walk upstairs together, and I push the key into the lock.

It’s jammed.

"That’s strange", I say, doing my best to combine polite only-just-met-you small talk with Urgent Mental Brainstorm Of What On Earth Might Have Happened.

I spend the best part of 5 minutes wiggling the key in the lock, before realizing that this isn’t going anywhere. I send disappointed potential-student to the local café (I don’t really want him seeing me kicking the door down), get straight on the phone to Tommy, who’s been away for a few days and isn’t coming back until later.

No-one but the landlord has been there since me, two days previously, so we go through the potential scenarios whilst I do my unsuccessful best to karate-kick the door in.

[note to self: take gym more seriously.]

It feels like the lock has been blocked from the inside. Logically, we work out this can’t have been the case, unless the Landlord had accidently blocked the lock, then shut the door forcefully.

I remember there’s a fire escape ladder round the back. "Shall I try and break in?"

Three phonecalls, twenty minutes, and one frightening jump over a 30 ft drop later, I’m climbing in through the second floor window. It doesn’t take me long to get to the other side of the front door, and find my prognosis to be a sound one. Someone has blocked the lock. My ’stupid landlord’ theory must be correct. She blocked it, forgot she’d done it, then forced the door shut when she left.

Mr Simon Hewitt Poirot’s assumptions are only debunked ten hours later when, a couple of hours into our drive up the M6 motorway towards the North Wales International Festival (recital in the morning), the phone rings. It’s Tommy. "I’ve got some really bad news". I pull over.

"I’ve been burgled. They’ve taken the bag with my Laptop in. It’s got the Imo project on it. And the naxos disc. And my compositions."

Oh ****.

The Imo CD is due out on 22 October. Tommy’s disc that he’s editing for the naxos release was almost complete. And there’s hours of TV/Film material that he churned out on that laptop… and it’s not backed up either.

My mind races. We’ve not only lost thousands of pounds of (uninsured) equipment, but many weeks of Thomas’s time too. Ag.

The phone rings again…

It’s David’s flatmate. "I need to speak to David. The house has been burgled".

Unbelievably, David’s house has been completely ransacked too. Thieves have taken many of the valuable objects from his house.

What is going on?

By the time we finally reach Wales, it’s getting on for 3am, and as I pull over at the side of a roundabout to check the map again (no Sat Nav, sadly), I notice blue flashing lights stopping behind as well.

I don’t know if they realise that I hadn’t realised that they had wanted me to stop, but that I stopped anyway. But I put on my finest Hugh Grant impression, and Nice Welsh Policeman immediately realizes I’m just incompetent, rather than suspicious. He deciphers my map, gives me some directions, and I promptly pull off in the wrong direction.

The police car switches on its blue lights and follows us, probably out of pity this time rather than necessity, then stops us again. "We’re going back to base anyway" they say, "just follow us!".

20 minutes later, they deposit us, exhausted, at the front of our hotel.

**

I’m not quite sure at the moment what’s going to happen about the Imo CD. It’s devastating news, obviously, but I’m hoping that - if we can raise the funds - things can be salvaged from backup discs, and we can keep the project on track.

What’s for certain is that we won’t be able to produce anything for the concerts, which is a terrible shame — I was about to announce a UK minitour in November which was designed especially to celebrate the new disc. The tour will still go ahead though, so watch for an announcement in the next 4-5 days.

I’ll update you again soon.

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