On The Run

Regular readers of this blog will have “heard” me speak about my Polish (ex)neighbours before. Particularly daddy Pole who liked to wear shorts so tight it was like looking at a couple of vacuum packed faggots stapled to an all-in wrestler’s crotch.

Well, there have been developments.

They disappeared a couple of months ago amidst loud telephone conversations in their native tongue that we could hear quite plainly by standing on top of the kitchen counter and pressing a stethoscope to the wall. The conversations sounded stressed and urgent. They were obviously trying to book last minute flights at the nearest international airport. We assumed they’d decided to cut their losses in recession hit Britain and were heading back to their motherland.

Once they were gone we thought no more of them except to occasionally reminisce whimsically about the stressed faggots.

And then we received a letter from a debt collecting agency last week enquiring very stiffly if we knew of their exact whereabouts (the family and the faggots).

It seems they’d racked up quite a bit of debt and had decided to jump ship before the bailiffs arrived to confiscate their Nintendo Wii.

Not sure how I feel about it really. Part of me – possibly the slightly xenophobic part of me – feels a little put out that they came to this country, made good with our products and services and then left without paying their dues.

But the biggest part of me, if I’m honest, thinks good luck to them. Keep your heads down and keep running!

I’d like to think of them growing ridiculous moustaches and wearing incongruous sunglasses on the Costa del Sol somewhere. Possibly having dealings with the European underworld or local mafia. Obtaining new identities, false passports, new dental records. Maybe even having eye transplants like Tom Cruise in Minority Report – though I admit this might be taking things a little bit too far.

I also find it amusing (though it’s an awful joke) that this dear Polish family have absconded without paying council (poll) tax... even though it’s effectively cocking-a-snook at the local authority that pays my wages.

Anyway, I’m checking the Interpol web site regularly now.

Keeping an eye out, keeping ‘em peeled. Scanning the Most Wanted lists.

I’d recognize those freshly pressed faggots anywhere...

The Littlest Shoplifter

I’d like to make it clear that, as a rule, we do not hold the Artful Dodger or Fagin in high regard in my house. We do not concur with the ethos that you “have to pick a pocket or two” to make it in this world and, with this is mind, we do our best, Karen and me, to instill good manners, the twin virtues of honesty and integrity and an all encompassing high moral outlook into our children so that they may one day bloom into fine, upstanding citizens of the future global community.

So it was a shock to find out that one of them is, by nature, a shoplifter.

We’d nipped into town on Saturday afternoon to run a few boring errands. These lasted a mere hour but seemed interminably forever to Ben and Tom so on the way back to the car we elected to nip into a neat little newsagent en route to purchase some sweetie treats for us all.

Tom was completely ensconced in his pushchair by this point, with the clear plastic rain cover fastened down tight over him to protect him from the lashings of a particularly vicious rain shower.

We were no more than 2 minutes in the shop. Just enough time for me to buy four packets of Cadbury’s Giant Chocolate Buttons (I heartily recommend them for a mid afternoon snack) and clear the moths out of my wallet to pay for them.

We then headed back to the car with our well-gotten gains...

...only to find when we extricated Tom from his little plastic bubble that the little monkey had somehow unfastened one side of the cover and had managed to half-inch a huge birthday badge from the newsagent without either them or us noticing. He’d also managed to remove it from its cardboard packaging and undo the safety pin at the back.

The badge – an ironic comment I’m sure on his father’s approaching 40th birthday in 2 week’s time – read in large bold letters: HAPPY 80th!

We weren’t sure whether to laugh or... well, not cry exactly, but at the very least give Tom the “angry face”. As it was we really didn’t have the heart to do the latter. He looked far too cute and innocent to be flogged for the sake of a £1.39 badge.

And I’m afraid we also failed in our civic duty to return the badge to the premises from which it was so illegally wrested and restore our previously unblemished characters. We were too knackered and far too wet and just wanted to return home as quickly as possible.

So Tom got his chocolate without a frown and the badge was shoved into a drawer that has now been enshrined as “Tom’s First Haul”.

Next week we’re taking him to the bank to see how he gets on with the ATM’s and possibly visiting a high class jeweller afterwards.

All being well when I next blog to you all I shall be doing so from a plush apartment in St Moritz.

After all...

Why should we break our backs
Stupidly paying tax?
Better get some untaxed income
Better to pick-a-pocket or two...

I love a good musical, me.

Burglary With Style

Robin Hood had it. The Great Train Robbers had it. Bonnie and Clyde had it in spades. Prometheus. The Artful Dodger… the list could go on.

Great thieves, ladies and gentlemen. Robbers with style. Bandits with a bit of class.

You can’t help admiring them. The guts. The arrogance. The sheer chutzpah of their endeavours.

They have now been joined by an as yet unnamed fellow from India who managed to hypnotize (yes, you read that right – HYPNOTIZE) a Mumbai jewellery store worker out of £160,000 dollars worth of loot.

Yahoo news reports it thus:

“Indian police are hunting a conman who hypnotised a Mumbai jewellery store worker before stealing 160,000 dollars worth of diamond necklaces and bracelets.

Katrina Sunil Purswami, who works at the Seres store in the upmarket Bandra West suburb, was told by the man on Saturday that he wanted to give the gems as a present and persuaded her to bring them to a nearby hotel.

"When the employee went to the hotel, the accused acted like he was the owner," senior police inspector Prakash George was quoted as saying by the Daily News and Analysis newspaper on Monday.

"As Purswami was showing him the sets, he asked her to write the details of the sets for him. He then hypnotised her and decamped with the ornaments. Purswami was left confused and could not understand what was going on."

The officer said the jeweller's store was newly opened and the owner allowed the employee to visit the hotel with the diamonds because he thought he was in line for a large sale.

Police are studying CCTV from the hotel to try to identify the conman but cameras at the shop were not working, George said.”

I think this is marvellous.

I know theft is wrong but there is just something so brilliant about this story. Nobody got hurt. I’m sure the jeweller had insurance. Property and person were not injured. I’m not advocating what has happened but, by God, I’d like to shake the thief by the hand (whilst avoiding his mesmeric gaze lest my cheap wristwatch find itself inveigled into his back pocket while I perform chicken impressions to the bemusement of all on-lookers).

I just wonder how he did it.

Did he swing a pocket watch in front of the hapless shop assistant? “I’m sorry miss, but I think my watch is skipping a second or two… could you keep a close eye on it for a minute and see what you think?”

Did he stare intensely into her eyes, soul locked to soul, and speak in a voice lower than Barry White’s gonads and impel her helplessly to do as he said?

Or did he fire lightning bolts into her from his fingertips like The Emperor from Star Wars and cackle evilly as her body, stiffened into a sub-zombie state, staggered around the room and dropped a hundred thousand pounds worth of Tom Foolery into his lap… candy from a baby style.

Most important of all: did he have a long thin moustache which he twirled wickedly before tossing his black silk cape over his shoulder and fleeing from the scene of his crime?

There is surely a great novel in this story and if I wasn’t 180,000 words into one already I’d be musing on the plot and the characters and trying to acquire an agent.

I only hope that when the police find him – as they surely will (a trail of people clucking like chickens is hard to miss) – he isn’t found with a Paul Mckenna self help book sticking out of his back pocket (along with my watch).

That would be so disappointing.

Theftbook

My relationship with Facebook has always been fraught to say the least.

I find the site annoyingly clunky, slow loading and just too bloated with useless “apps” and fly-by-night user groups who constantly paw at me wanting my cyber attention when in truth I’m rarely in the mood to give it.

The facility I use most on Facebook is the “ignore” button and I do apologize if you have been on the wrong end of it. It’s nothing personal.

Why be on Facebook in the first place then?

Well. I was curious. It was recommended to me by a friend (a real one). And I thought “why not?”

And once you’re on there it’s damned hard to get yourself off.

Facebook, you see, doesn’t like to let go.

Facebook has ownership issues.

Facebook is something of a smug, grasping, bully that doesn’t like to let anyone of anything out of its mucky clutches.

Want evidence?

Facebook has now decided to grant itself rights to users’ photos, wall posts and just about every conceivable bit of information that people are naïve enough to post on its site. Forever.

Even if you manage to delete your account all your photos and information will be archived somewhere and available for use by the Facebook bigwigs for what has been quoted in the Metro as “public performances”

Public performances?

WTF?

Has Facebook not heard of the data protection act or are they somehow exempt?

Here’s another quote for the Metro (only the best sources for me):

“Yesterday, the site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg attempted to defuse the row, insisting in his blog, ‘In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want.’”

Ri-i-i-i-ght.

In a way I wouldn’t want.

So that’ll be not at all then.

So what’s the point of Facebook hanging onto such information and private (can you read that, Zuckerberg: P – R – I – V – A – T – E ) photos in the first place?

Or is Facebook hoping that at some point in the future I will be quite content to let my personal information be used in some viral advertising campaign or pasted over a Beatles soundtrack to sell an updated version of their shitty little web site to invading Martians? Or even enable Wal-Mart to target me with useless white goods that they think I desperately need and must absolutely buy?

Dream on, Facebook.

Keeping my information without my express permission is theft. Holding my photos – my intellectual property – for a future use that I cannot control or opt out from, no mater how innocuous, is an infringement of my basic human rights.

Facebook, it’s time you were de-faced.

Permanently.

Faith In Human Nature

A few months ago I reported on a monumental act of misfeasance.

Back in February somebody stole our green recycling bin that had been newly delivered to our house by the local authority. I had to go to the police (as directed by said local authority) and fill out various reports before we could be allocated a brand new one.

All this on top of some petty thief’s criminal attempts to foil my magnificent recycling plans was too much to bear. I suffered apoplexy, hysteria and gout and was hospitalized for several months. I suffered hallucinations and wrote them down as blog entries. I was not a well bunny.

Imagine the horror then of returning home at the end of last week to find that our general refuse bin (black this time) had also been snatched.

It was gone. Just gone. Left out for the refuse team who were due to empty it that day and then stolen in the prime of its life.

In the space of a second I was on the edge of full mental collapse.

One bin goes missing and you feel – despite the annoyance – OK, just kids messing about, some drunken a-hole having a laugh as he wends his way home. But two... suddenly it feels like a vendetta. Siege mentality sets in. The hatches are battened and the big guns wheeled out.

Xenophobia and misanthropy leap to the fore. Who was it? Who was it? Is this the start of a hate campaign? Are they going to steal our car trailer next? It was our Polish neighbours, I’m sure of it. It has to be! They speak with a funny accent and own three cars... it has to be them! Or it’s the chavs up the road. Of course! All that bling... it’s a telltale sign. They’ve got our bin hidden in the boot of their bright blue BMW...

By nightfall I had drafted a scathing blog, written letters to the editor of the local rag and dictated a letter to the chief exec of the council. I even considered writing to Boris Johnson but managed to reel the wavering line of my sanity back in before I crossed that point of no return.

Imagine my surprise then when, next morning, our black bin was mysteriously back on our doorstep. They’ve all got addresses on you see and some kind soul, finding it perhaps abandoned and enfeebled by the roadside had taken the trouble to return it to the family who loved it most dearly.

Oh joy.

What can I say? I felt a mite foolish. All that ranting and raving. All that class war mongering. All for nothing.

My faith in human nature has been totally restored. There are good people out there.

So God bless you, every single one of you. I shall think of you all every time I stuff a full refuse sack into my newly returned black bin.

I shall keep this country clean for you.

There is a corner of a foreign landfill that will be forever England.

Bin Thief

I realize that this event in no way compares to happenings elsewhere over the weekend – oil rig bomb threats and fires in Camden, etc – but it has riled me nonetheless.

Last Thursday the local council delivered to all its district householders green bins for the recycling of garden waste. Karen and I were pleased because (a) we like to think we’re pretty green minded anyway and (b) we’ve got a shedload of chopped brambles and cuttings that need disposing of.

Late Thursday night – within hours of the bin being delivered – it was stolen by a zealous gardener of unknown identity... though I believe in this case this particular Monty Don favoured certain varieties of hop as opposed to hyacinths and hollyhocks.

The next morning, on finding I’d been the victim of a bin-napping, I was rather gobsmacked and more than a little annoyed. Everybody in the entire town is getting a bin. Everybody! So why go to all that trouble to nick one?

To make it worse I naturally rang the council, explained what had happened and requested a replacement bin if at all possible. I was told it was indeed possible but they could only replace the bin provided I gave them a police crime incident number first.

Yes.

I had to ring the police, ask them to halt all their ongoing murder enquiries, report that my new bin was stolen, get a crime number from the disbelieving police officer and then ring the council straight back with it.

Aside: ringing the police took two attempts as the first time I rang I was told they were all at lunch and could I please ring back after 2pm?

Oh how I love the country England is turning into.

I hope the life of whoever has stolen our bin provides them with enough crap for them to make good use of it.

I am now off to the doctors. I woke up with an eye infection today – gummy eye and blurred vision.

I am not in a good mood.