Comment:The horrors of home security AKA when burglar-proofing gets creepy

It’s holiday season, meaning home security is big business.

As we pack our cases and outsource our pets, our holiday excitement is tainted only by the fear of burglars making off with all of our stuff.

Aside from alarms, light timers and eagle-eyed neighbours, what can we do to boost our home’s security?

In these new-fangled times, a camera system from off the internet is the extra touch we’ve all been missing – and are now increasingly opting to invest in.

My other half took advantage of an Amazon Prime special and snapped up a set of three creepy cameras to park in and around our house.

Sign up to the app and you can receive alerts every time one of the cameras picks something up. It’s sort of clever – it definitely films stuff – but there are issues.

Like, a bush in our back garden regularly sends the nearby camera into overdrive. As much as I love the sight of the side of my house, the kids’ trampoline and the end of our lawn, a branch twitching in the foreground, you can have too much of a good thing.

The indoor camera is obviously the worst thing ever. Great if you’re away, but when you’re not, it’s just plain unseemly. Who wants to receive an alert that they’ve just helped themselves to another bag of crisps? Who needs that? I’ve made my thoughts clear on the matter, and the conservatory-cam now only works in a certain time window (when I’m typically asleep and not filling my face with crisps), or when we’re away.

I’ve deactivated my alerts for the time being out of sheer irritation, but will be ramping them back up again when we next go on holiday. I’ve no idea how I’ll feel if the dreaded ‘burglar making off with stuff’ footage becomes a reality. For now I must apologise to my poor neighbour, who’ll be filmed coming and going to feed our ungrateful cats. Hoping this isn’t a deal-breaker…