Charlotte Edwardes: An attempted break-in has turned me into an online curtain-twitcher — I’m seeing my ’hood in a new light

“Someone’s tried to break in to the house,” one of the kids yells from the kitchen at 7am on Saturday morning. When I get down there, I am expecting shattered glass, splintered wood, or maybe a muddy trainer print. Instead the child is at the table swinging his legs with an overflowing bowl of Coco Pops. Where did they try to break in? I scan the room.

“Through the cat flap,” the child says, pointing to the far corner. What? Even the cat won’t use the catflap.

But the little plastic swing door has indeed been smashed from its plastic hinges, and the stiff-bristled broom from the garden has been posted through, presumably followed by a burglar’s arm, attempting to either smash a window or unhook a catch.

Later, the neighbours living two doors down rewind their CCTV footage and find the shaky image of a figure slinking quickly across their darkened lawn at 3am. Up he leaps over their wall, then another, and into our garden. The camera angle prevents us seeing more.

Word of the attempt spreads. Another neighbour texts to say how their front door lock had been tried with a credit card a couple of weeks back. Someone else’s window latch has been “popped” on a ground floor. Apparently, in the square up the road, “there have been loads of attempted break-ins”.

I’m suddenly conscious that everyone in the street has a better handle on these incidents of petty crime than I do. Two-doors-down sends me a link to Nextdoor.co.uk. From what I can discern, it’s online curtain-twitching. There’s a map of houses in our ward: green are “members”, yellow “invitees” and pink “no members”. I am ashamed that I am one of very few in my street not signed up.

But once in I’m immersed in the minutiae of very local news. A café is closing down. A Sainsbury’s is opening. In the bric-a-brac section, someone is offering a 10-year-old “lightly slept on” mattress. They slept lightly? They are light? There’s a thread about foxes, which includes incriminating photos of foxes and cats asleep on the same shed roof. Who knew they were in cahoots?

The most gripping section by far is Crime and Safety. I read about a “huge drugs and cash” bust nearby. There are photos of fat cellophane packets. Beneath them, locals congratulate the police on their work. As a devotee of “Up ’ere, Sarge” television, I always thought I was a crime-obsessive. Not compared with the inner-city Miss Marples living around me.

But this stuff is addictive. One posts a security camera screengrab of a man “fishing” through their letterbox. Instantly, a number of live witnesses chart his suspicious activity across the area. The local police community support officer is notified — and he’s on here too, responding to neighbours.

I message him about my attempted burglary and he’s swift to respond, adding, by way of encouragement: “Reported burglaries might sometimes be considered eligible for free home security packs.”

I’m already on it, Sarge.

Tom has an unassuming talent to amuse

Tom Hollander is brilliant in Baptiste, the chilling BBC One drama that had its first showing last night — but then he’s pretty brilliant in everything, except for looking comfortable being in the high-beam of publicity. In press pictures he always looks like he’d prefer to dissolve into the red carpet. Perhaps that’s why we don’t see him in gushy magazine spreads but do spy him doing solitary Christmas shopping in John Lewis Oxford Street.

That’s not to say he isn’t in magazines at all. He’s a quiet (and perhaps unlikely) contributor to The Spectator. His pieces are irreverent and subtly revealing (sex, “furious” masturbation).

A favourite was about Joan Collins, who told him to visit when he was next in St Tropez. Under pressure from excited friends, he left a message: he was in town, staying nearby. She left one by return: “Can’t wait to see you, darling” — then failed to hang up. So the recording continued: “Urgh. I hope he doesn’t come… I invited him to stay weeks ago and he never got back and now apparently he’s having a much more glamorous time up the road.”

Blood suckers rule at the school gates

There are teenagers in every generation who prize a love bite.

I notice the suspicious marks when I drop the girls off at their school in the morning. Given that vampires don’t exist, I assume they are caused by boys who are not long weaned.

When I was 14, boys pedalled furiously up the hill to my school to snog us in a hay barn. My first kiss was accompanied by the scratching of straw through my school tights, and also a battle to save my neck from a human leeching.

Yesterday my friend’s daughter told me that she also hates such things — the bruise on her neck was from “paintballing”.