Attacks and the city

Yesterday a friend's house was burgled. She was at her flat in Crouch End and two guys smashed through a window and robbed her at knifepoint. It was hardly the haul of the century, she's in the process of moving and a lot of her prized possessions - laptop, digital cameras - were at the new place. She only had a fiver in her wallet and was able to cancel her credit cards straight away.

It could have been so much worse - and, obviously, not just from a robbery perspective. They didn't touch her, but she is pretty shaken. Not helped by my leaving a rather ratty voicemail message when she didn't show up last night at the movie we were meant to see. I felt more than a bit guilty when she told me what had happened today.

I'm not one to be alarmist over crime, but it seems an inordinate amount of people I know in London have been attacked or threatened. I was jumped by three guys at a tube station last year, was pummeled as they tried to grab my manbag (insert your own double entendre here), but managed to hold on to it because it had a digital recorder and notebook from an interview I had done but not written yet. A committed journo above all else.

I've lived in places that you would figure would have a similar level of crime to London - hard as nails Glasgow, Budapest, Rome, Hamburg and erm, Edinburgh. But I never experienced any bother in any of the cities and didn't know anybody who did. Actually in Budapest I was almost hit by a knife thrown my way - I was walking by a dodgy pub when it came whistling out the open door past my head. Some guy ran out of the pub to pick it up, said bocsánat (sorry) to me as if he accidentally trod on my toes before running back inside. I didn't stick around to see what happened.

There seems just to be a heightened level of casual violence here. Probably not helped by the Met, who are the most woefully inept police force on the planet. No matter, Boris will soon sort it all out.