Saturday 1 November 2008

The most expensive swim ever??

This is no doubt going to be a rant but so be it!!!

As you may have noticed from the log of time/distance, I've not been doing quite as much swimming as I would have liked. The prospect of doing 170 laps of a pool each time does not fill me with joy so it tends to be the one that gets moved if things are busy.

I was getting annoyed by my lack of swimming though so decided to make sure that I got my long swim in this week. I use a Fitness First gym just next to the office, and to avoid the crowds, tend to go either late morning or early afternoon.

So at about 3.15 yesterday, just after a hail storm had passed through, I grabbed my jacket and swim gear from the office and went for my session. Fitness First give you a membership card that you swipe to get in and then also use to lock your lockers. I then headed into the pool, wrapped my card in my towel and left it on the side of the pool just like everyone else. The off into my own little world for an hour and a bit to do my 3.5km swim.

I finish that feeling quite pleased with myself for having the motivation to get out and do it, hop out, grab my towel but alas...no membership card?!? At first I assume that someone must have picked it up by mistake but then I remember that I had a post-it note stuck to it with the swim session that I had planned so no one would have mistakenly picked that up. I then start thinking the worst. Head into the changing rooms to see that my locker is locked so finally manage to track the manager down and they open it.....b£$&*%d...almost everything has been stolen.

It just so happens that on this day I also seem to have managed to take almost everything valuable to the gym with me so they managed to get away with the following:

Wedding ring
Wallet (including all my cards, driving licence and £80 in cash)
Blackberry
Watch (18th birthday present from my mum)

All of those bits I can understand that if I was a thief I would take them to, but the last bit really takes the biscuit, they also decided to steal my suit, both jacket and trousers! Not sure what was wrong with my shirt, boxers socks and shoes as they thought they would leave those for me, maybe my sense of fashion wasn't quite up to scratch for them!!

So then begins the long process of trying to sort it all out. Lucky in some ways that another guy in the changing room as I was ranting at the manager was a police man so he helped me to report it to the relevant place and then I spent the next hour or so trying to cancel bank cards etc.

Should probably point out that at this point I have put my shirt back on and have been lent some nice crop trousers by a member of staff so that I am at least decent. Erika was due to be meeting me at London bridge anyway as she had a medical appointment so I called her at work and asked her to come over to my office and pick up a spare suit that I luckily had in the office (I ride into work everyday so leave most of my clothes at work).

So eventually I am back to being fully dressed but still very angry! I'm obviously pretty gutted about losing the ring and my watch but don't feel that I was particularly careless, as the policeman said to me, he always leaves his valuables in his locker and does the same with the card.

I must have been followed into the changing rooms by whoever did it, otherwise they wouldn't have know what locker I had used and when the manager looked into the locker next to it there was a crowbar in there so someone was pretty intent on stealing some stuff. The gym has CCTV in the pool so they should be able to get a pretty good look at who was picking up stuff from my towel but I very much doubt that I will ever see that stuff again.

I managed to get all of my cards cancelled and report it to the police yesterday evening and then called my insurance company this morning and I think that most of it will be covered.

So just when I think that it is not too bad, I log on to my internet banking to see that the nice chap who took my stuff, also managed to draw £400 out of one of my bank accounts. It sounds really stupid now but a few days ago I had written the pin numbers down on a post-it note as we have just opened a new account and I was going to go to a machine and change them, however all of the machines wouldn't let me change it for whatever reason and I has completely forgotten about the bit of paper. I can only imagine that it must have still been in my jacket as I can't see any other way that he would have got cash out. He must have got pretty lucky with that as I have about 10 cards in my wallet that need a pin number or some sort so he would have had to try each of them before he found the right one (that was the only one with that PIN number).

I've spoken to the bank about it and reported the fraud but am not sure whether I will ever get that money back so it could end up being an expensive swim. That money is not covered by my insurance even though he got it as a result of stealing my stuff so I will have to wait and see what comes of that.

I'm now just really angry with the whole thing, and feel a bit stupid for making it so easy for someone to get away with so much money and valuables. I clearly upset someone in a previous life!

Anyway, I think that is my rant over, feel a bit better now!! I always knew that swimming was bad for you!

We then had Erika's appointment with her cardiologist. He confirmed that she does have WPW syndrome (google it if you want to know more!) and after he talked us through the options we decided that it was best to have the procedure done on her heart that should cure the problem.

He said that she should get the appointment within the next 4 weeks so it will be nice to get that out of the way.

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