Allotments 4 All

beautiful day again, but so hot have waited until this evening to visit lottie to do a bit of tinkering.  Been there a while, when about 7.30pm there's a huge, and I mean huge, black cloud of smoke pouring from one of the lotties.  Ran round and sure enough, looks like vandals have set fire to the shed or something.  Fire engine eventually arrived, but the damage is terrible.

Saw a couple of very young lads, they were very calm walking through the car park, didn't look excited or guilty or emotional, but someone else thinks they saw the same 2 boys in the lane where the fire was - of course tonight was the night that I didn't have my camera with me.  They could be innocent though, looked very young, say around 12.

Wonder if the kids do it just to see the fire engine ?  Will be very distressing to the owner when they realise what has happened.  Makes you realise how vulnerable the lotties are.

So sad and pointless.

 >:(

Words fail me, or at least the printable ones...

>:( Gutted to hear your news mc, anything you need to help set things to rights?

>:( I really don't think I could control myself if I witnessed a situation like that, even with the BIG BOYS, twould be a red rag to a bull knee jerk reaction and I'd probably be in big trouble after the event >:(

Why oh why do people / children exist  who are hell bent on ruining things for other people!  If they put all the same energy into something productive they would probably do really well in life...what makes people / children do these things?

I get very upset and down when i hear things like this.

It makes me really angry to hear of things like this happeneing.  Most people don't have insurance on their lottie shed and the shed and the things they have in them cost a lot to replace.  I know that if anything like this happened to me I would really struggle

Really sorry to read about this  :(    It's my greatest fear to be honest.

Absolutely horrible, and know exactly how they will feel, we had our fence burnt down last year, and it gave access to all the other yobs, so kids were constantly stamping on our plot until it was fixed.  It is so disheartening and makes you feel really angry.   >:( busy_lizzie

It's never happened to me, but it did happen to someone else on the site. Last year some idiot set a great mass of bamboo on an empty plot burning; the fire went right up the railway embankment. I don't know whether any trains were delayed as a result.

>:(
I'm with supersprout, if you let me know if there's anything
I can do to help. :(

i feel heart sorry for your plot neighbours, pure mindless vandalism. what the hell do they get out of it? let us know if theres anything we can do.

Sorry to hear that mc55.  If your neighbours need any seeds to replace lost crops, give us a shout.

Thanks guys - popping up on Thursday, will try to get an update.

We had a breakin about 2 weeks ago they where caugth red handed,
police treated it a bit of a joke. Then very early on Sunday morning someone broke in again only this time they set fire to three sheds about £1500 of damage The police arrived about on Tueday afternoon and again thought it to be a bit of a joke. We never expected anything else from the police down here, if they spent as much time pounding the beat during the nights as they spend in the back room of the local pub then we would perhaps regain control of our streets.

Our site had a spate of break-ins early last year. We reported it to the police (won't say how long I had to hang on for to get them to answer as it wasn't a 999 call). Fortunately the individual had left some blood which they could test.

Needless to say it was tied in to other local low level crime and eventually an arrest was made and the individual was taken to court. Rumour has it that the individual had had a deprived upbringing and got off.

Despite the finest efforts of the criminal justice system I think the message got through that we will report crimes and we seem to have had less attention from vandals ever since. It also means that the local beat officer knows we exist.

Moral of the story - get to know your beat officer and report anything that happens.