Someone broke into our apartment last night while we were out. In itself, not that unusual, people get robbed all the time. Yet the things that were taken were very odd indeed. Bacon, sausages, a few bottles of wine and port and a jar of instant coffee. The first two items are difficult to get here in Portugal and would not appeal to a Portuguese person. So, logically, we’ve been robbed by an English person (as they were specifically English items). We’ve either got someone who wanted a boozy breakfast or someone is messing with our heads. What makes it worse is that we have two dogs…..not the most vicious things in the world, agreed, but they do at least sound fearsome. So we end up with the unappealing conclusion that it was someone who knows us, knows the dogs (and they know them perhaps) who broke in. The wife has just pointed out that she almost preferred being robbed for money (as happened before the dogs) rather than this, for of course now we’re running through the people we know trying to work out who it was. The creation of that sort of distrust within one’s social circle is far more damaging than losing a few hundred euros would have been.