Something really crappy happened yesterday - my entire purse with all my cards got nabbed straight out of my bag whilst in Starbucks. kaz_mahoney and I were being complete geeks, as usual about books, writing, authors, and what may be...when it happened.

Luckily for me, I noticed it soon after, rang hubby dearest who in turn rang the bank and cancelled the cards. It turns out the grimy thieves tried to withdraw cash from my credit card within minutes of stealing it. But because they thought they had the right pin-number they were quite brazen too and they tried four times going from a big cash withdrawl to smaller. They failed to withdraw anything though as they pin they used was incorrect.

But, that left me with no money - no means to get home, nothing. My husband works on the other side of London in the City and he can't very well up and come and collect me. Fortunately I was at work when it happened so I could borrow money from pettycash to buy a new Oyster card. I didn't need anything else but as I was mulling it all over in my head, I realised how dependent I've become on my "ready" cash of my bank card. And how mobile I was because of my Oyster card.

Can you imagine what that must feel like if something like that - a robbery - had happened to a younger person? If they got robbed and they had nowhere to turn - people don't listen and they genuinely don't care. I've seen it before and have been guilty of walking past someone saying they only need £x to get home, because I thought they were chancing it.

What a horrible feeling and experience. And definitely something to channel in a future WIP should my protags ever end up on the run, with no money. How do you run for your life from baddies with no resources?

Anyway! They got no money out of it and hopefully I will soon be the proud owner of a new set of cards. Actually, you know what was the worst thing? My SCBWI membership card was in that purse, along with my Waterstones card! I actually rang them up - Waterstone's, that is - and got them to transfer my points onto another card and to post it onto me. Bloody thieves! No one gets discounts on books except me!

Also, beware any dodgy person in my next book, you will be eviscerated, oh yes, you will. And there will be pain, lots of pain. ;-)