On the morning of the fourth of the fourth month in 1974, number four, Forthcoming Street was burgled. In the dark silence, four tempted burglars wielded four implements necessary for a smooth robbery.
They broke the cabinets on the wall and smashed the china. One of them embedded his foot in the TV, the other three threw him into the fridge for doing so. The rings were snuck silently from the master bedroom as the parents slept; the piggy banks and other cash lying around was removed from the master bedroom and the two children's bedrooms.
Having committed such a smashing crime, the burglars looked around them at the ruins. It seemed the perfect getaway would turn out to be a haunting memory. The one who put his foot through the TV was suddenly struck by kindness.
They had robbed the family of possessions and money, so why should they rob them of time? With the same swiftness as the robbery the four robbers were rushing to every clock on the wall and in every appliance and alarm; analogue and digital, the time in the house was set back three hours.
In seven hours time the parents woke their children to the screaming howls of the mother. Their circadian rhythm was disrupted, and that extra sleep was soon drained from their faces. They had been robbed, their home broken.
The father had to rush to work that morning at the drill factory and the twins had to get to school for an all important test.
The father came in to work following the same every day route and parked in his unlabelled parking space and entered through the employee entrance. He was however, fired, half an hour later after arguing he was not late and that he just been burgled. The children were seated down to the test and failed. Thoughts of the robbery had stolen all their other thoughts away.
The burglars had an extra three hours on any authorities; they had already sold off their latest stolen stash for several hundred pounds.
- Jason Hodge, Year 13, Logan Park High School
