By Laura Elvin
A mum was left stunned after waking up to find a gateau-guzzling stranger had pitched up a tent in her front garden.
Erika White was alerted by her young son to the makeshift home on the lawn of her end-of-terrace home at 6.35am on Monday (June 24).
The baffled finance analyst confronted the brazen trespasser, who initially ignored her polite request to move on.
Erika, who lives in Dartford with her seven-year-old daughter and sons, eight and 14, described the breach captured on her doorbell camera as “brazen”.
“It was the absolute audacity of it,” she said. “It’s so brazen.
“My littlest boy was looking out the window to see what the weather was like and he said to me ‘Mummy, there’s a tent outside’.
“It literally took up the whole front garden.
“I went out. I didn’t want to be aggressive. He looked at me.
“I said ‘excuse me – do you realise you’re in my front garden in a tent? Could you move yourself please?'”
The 38-year-old noticed that when the cheeky camper unzipped the tent she could see he had a family sized strawberry gateaux inside with him.
Erika believes the uninvited guest pitched his tent away from her garden before moving it in from the side – because her doorbell camera didn’t go off.
She says in hindsight she remembers hearing noises at around 5am but thought it was her scheduled tumble dryer load.
At about 6.35am Erika confronted him and when he hadn’t left she went out again at 6.50am.
“I told him ‘if you don’t go I’m going to have to call the police’,” she added.
He finally moved on at around 7.05am.
The mum-of-three speculated he could be a worker at a nearby fruit picking farm, as many commute along the road and he did not speak English as a first language.
She said he was presentable and didn’t seem homeless – further adding to her confusion.