YOU'VE probably heard this gripe a thousand times over but I'm about to give it to you again.

That's because I'm sick to the back teeth with lawless youths who insist on making my life as difficult as possible, posing daily inconveniences for me to deal with.

My car is secondhand, basic, boring and not particularly pretty. It cost me just a few hundred quid, and the same again to insure.

But for some unknown reason, in the two years I have owned it, it has attracted dozens of thieves to try their luck and break into it.

First they took the speakers, then they took the stereo, next they took the whole car - but left it with its locks damaged in the next street.

I've had the ignition smashed and the replacement locks wrecked - all costing me the equivalent of a year's road tax.

In fact, the locks are so badly damaged by thieves that someone - whoever the pathetic human being might be - breaks into the car, has a look around and sees nothing valuable, and leaves it alone almost every day.

I sometimes feel like leaving them a little something to eat, or a note apologising for the fag butts on the floor. I should be charging rent.

But joking apart, the whole episode has cost me hundreds of pounds and I have been stopped by the police on countless occasions.

And, if some of these unruly law-breakers dare suggest "it's okay because you can claim on your insurance," I would gladly break something of their's.

I am in a vicious circle where if I make a claim for, say, a £100 stereo, I lose my no claims bonus which could cost me dearly in the future.

So my advice to these people is to get a job, spend their hard-earned money on buying, insuring and taxing their own car and then see how they would like someone breaking into it time after time.

I'm just biding my time until I can leave work 15 minutes early to catch them at it!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.