AS our shocking reports show this week, every silver lining has a cloud so to speak.

At the same time as Ilkley residents begin to enjoy the rare periods of prolonged sunshine during the English summer, burglars and thieves are starting to make hay. The trick is to sneak into houses through open doors left by occupants who are sunbathing in the garden.

It would be trite to portray such offences as sneaky and despicable because that description would fit most crimes, but burglars think nothing of sinking to the depths of human behaviour.

Our problem is how to prevent them profiting from their own brand of depravity. As the police would themselves admit, burglaries are very rarely solved to satisfaction of the victims.

Even if the perpetrators are eventually brought to book - most commonly by admitting legions of offences to be taken into consideration by sentencing judges - the stolen property is never recovered. The emphasis has to be, therefore, on prevention rather than cure.

If, in every field of normal activity, law abiding citizens have to be constantly paranoid about crime and criminals, quality of life is diminished considerably. But there are precautions we can take which are not as onerous as others. We can buy alarms which sound if an intruder crosses the threshold of our property when we are out in the garden.

But this solution sounds rather complicated and the alarm would need turning off every time we went inside to grab another cool beer from the fridge or use the bathroom.

It seems the only way householders can bask in the sun safe in the knowledge that their home is not being ransacked by a burglar at the same time is to make sure all the windows and doors are secure and the key is safely pocketed.