Two Brits, Two Friends & A Couple of Carabinieri

29th April 2011 is, of course, remembered by most

as being the day of William & Kate's wedding.

It was the hottest day of the year so far here in

the Cilento and we had 9 cubic metres of 

gravel to spread on what we were trying

to turn into our front garden.

Our friends Silvia & Angelo had come

up to help make the task a little easier.

Whilst we were all out there, we kept hearing a 

loud noise, one which hubby & I had heard 

intermittently over the past couple of days;

it sounded like scaffolding being offloaded.

But Angelo & hubby soon agreed that

it was more likely to be rocks or stones being loaded

onto a truck, and there was a HUGE pile of

same lying at the side of Sven & Helle's

house, which they were hoping to use for

their terraces & drystone walls as work on

their holiday home progressed.

This pile was a third bigger before the theft

Hubby & Angelo walked up the mountain 

to investigate...there was a red truck on 

Sven & Helle's driveway with 2 guys 

throwing stones into the back of it.

All four of us walked down to 

the end of our driveway to look out 

for the truck as it came back down the mountain,

we smiled at the guys as they drove past, then

promptly ran back up to the house memorising

the licence plate number as Silvia made a 

call to the Carabinieri.

20 minutes later a Carabinieri Jeep headed

full pelt up our second driveway.....

a plainclothes guy leapt out almost before

it came to a halt, brandishing his pistol; the 

uniformed guy got out more cautiously,

machine gun in hand (OK, 'machine gun' may not be
the technical term, but I'm female, I don't have a clue
when it comes to guns).
It was one of those 'surreal' moments
that I usually read about in books by other expats.

"Who called us?" asked the plain clothes guy.

"Me" replied Silvia. 

"But the number you phoned from is registered

to a male not a female" (shades of 'Big Brother is

watching you' going on here).

"Yes, it's my boyfriend's 'phone".

"OK, what did you see, where did it happen, are they

still up there?"

"2 guys stealing stones from the Danish house

up the mountain, and no, they were gone

before we made the call. But we do have

the licence plate number"

"OK, we'll go take a look. We'll ring & let you know

what we find"

And a few days later they did - the son of the

builder Sven & Helle were using had taken them

to start another project elsewhere and "was terribly sorry,

but he didn't know it was wrong and didn't think

anyone would notice them missing from such a huge pile"