Unwanted visitor

Oh, that's a bit frightening. I always keep the back gate and door locked unless I am outside in the garden. Glad no harm was done.

Yes please people, lock your back door, even when your in the garden. Mum's neighbours were robbed while they sat drinking tea in the garden as they had left the back door open.

A bit of a scary situation number

Worth logging this with the police, number, in case he was a chancer who does this regularly. If you hadn't been there would he have taken the opportunity to go further in your house?

AND - keep the back door locked when you are answering a call at the front door. It's known that a bogus caller will keep the householder talking while an accomplice comes in at the back door and makes off with portable valuables.

Number Frightening but he might just have been pissed. It does make sense to keep any side entrances or doors locked when you are at home or in the garden. Which advice I do not always follow.

Always leave a key near the inside of your main "escape" doors, but well out of view and inaccessible via the letter box. This could be life saver in case of an emergency.

Our spare door key is tied on a cord so you can open the door but not then easily wander off with the key in your pocket.

Thank goodness he was harmless! Keep doors locked but make sure family or friends have a key for emergencies. We had one of those last autumn when both out shopping and our burglar alarm went off annoying the entire neighbourhood for the whole afternoon! One brave neighbour had a recce and there was no sign of a break in and contacted my dog sitter friend who lets Grace out if we are out all day. She has the code so was able to switch it off and calm the distraught dog. The culprit? Door from utility to garage not quite shut and a gust of wind had dislodged it enough to trip the alarm.

All good advice but I do feel sad that we should have to think about our doors in those terms.

Many years ago we had gone to Burghley horse trials for the day and came back to a note in the kitchen from one of DD's friends thanking us for letting her esit at our house for her parents to pick up after her lunchtime shift at the village pub. When I next saw her I asked if I had left the back door unlocked or how had she got in. She laughed and said Oh no it wasn't exactly unlocked it was wide open!

Back gate is always locked unless I'm using it to take stuff out and I always lock the back door unless I am actually near enough to see it but lock it if I have to go elsewhere in the house...

My house backs onto open fields and I always keep the doors and windows at the back locked. The lock on one of the kitchen windows broke the other day and although the window catches are very secure I was happy that my wonderful brother in law called in this morning to fit a new one!

OMG! I think I might have died of fright on the spot. Am a stickler for locking doors. (but then leave windows open )

and always keep ypur mobile with you, in the garden etc etc mines nearly always in my pocket.

Thinks sadly of the days when we lived in London, and never locked our door...in the 1960s....the worst that happened in four years was that a drunken friend came in and slept on the floor.

I know Alie , but the world has changed so much that we just have to now, which is a shame. number at least your caller left quickly, sounds as if it happened because he was drunk, but as others say, lock the door!

Did you smell alcohol. Chances are he wouldn't have been drunk if you weren't in.
It's a well known ploy: ie, they say, oh sorry mate, got the wrong house.
Or in my case, it was a boat.

Yes, he did appear to be drunk, and as he had a foreign accent, he almost certainly was, as almost all the East European men around here seem to spend all their time on the booze. He staggered off down the side of the house opposite, they are E. Europeans, and he`s hardly ever sober, so he was probably visiting them. The only drawback to keeping the door locked is that we`d have to get up every time any family came round. I do lock it at 10pm, and it doesn`t get unlocked till I get up in the morning, even if I`m not first up.

Actually, I was most bothered about him leaving great big muddy footprints right across the kitchen floor!

Well yes. Good job he stopped before he reached the carpet.

Our front and back doors are always locked. It would be so easy for someone (opportunist thief, or worse) to open door quietly and creep in. Our Community Police meetings keep advising us of this. Especially at this time of the year, when people could be in their back gardens, leaving the front door unlocked.

I thought this was funny rather than frightening. One of my sons in law once got drunk, staggered home and went to sleep on the sofa. Unfortunately he was too befuddled to remember that he had married and bought a house and had gone "home" to his mother's!

Funny in your case apricot but I think we can all see that the situation for the OP was very different.

I know he turned out to be harmless, we`re just thanking our lucky stars that he wasn`t a nasty drunk, like the man opposite.

I had to have a security gate fixed to my side door, as I had an intruder some years ago. I was upstairs and he came into the kitchen. Must have heard me coming down as he made a break for it. Police arrested a yong man later and he admitted to entering my home

My in-laws had a habit of leaving the front door open in hot weather, but the door to the vestibule closed. But that all stopped when they discovered that whilst they were sitting in the dining room, watching TV, someone had been in and upstairs, and rifled the bedrooms.