WE had a little bit of drama this week. My wife runs a cleaning company and looks after a few Dales holiday cottages.

We walked into one on Saturday morning to discover that the departed occupants had left with all the furnishings.

Rather than spending an enjoyable week getting lost at Forbidden Corner, watching cheese being made at the creamery or observing the majestic beauty of Aysgarth Falls, they spent it loading a white van with the television, fridge freezer, microwave, mattresses, curtains, dining table and scatter cushions.

Clearly they had never heard the phrase, leave only footprints, take only pictures, as they didn’t seem to have left any footprints and they took the pictures as well. Indeed, it had been a fairly tidy burglary (or was it a theft, the police seemed to struggle with what to call it).

There were no signs the scoundrels had used the floor as a toilet as I’m led to believe often happens in burglaries. Apparently it’s the fear of being caught.

And they had even lifted the toilet seat up, which thanks to hours of watching repeats of Lewis meant we could detect that the crime had been committed by men.

I suggested that by lifting the seat, the thieves clearly had some manners and were not the cruel and calculating villains you might otherwise expect, although my wife declared that if they were actually gentlemen criminals and were stealing furniture to be redistributed to the homeless, they would have put the seat back down afterwards.

We called the police and they rushed over, or rather popped round the next day. I guess my hopes for roadblocks and a chopper hovering overhead had been unrealistic.

Hopefully the net is now closing in, although if anyone had any information on the crime please tell both the police and me for the sake of next week’s column.

The youngest boy did find the whole incident very disconcerting and to stop him worrying we told him the men responsible had been caught and locked up the very same day.