I Could Be The Great Leamington Spa Knicker Nicker

No, I could. With ease. And not just knickers but pretty much anything – kettles, DVDs, legumes, Brita water filer jug systems – provided it all fits neatly into a normal sized carrier bag of course. And it is an item I can pick up from Tesco.

‘Cos Tesco just don’t care. They’ve given me carte blanche to walk out of their store with absolutely anything I fancy.

Which is great if I could only find something that I actually like from their all encompassing range of household products – nicking a loaf of bread seems a bit lame and pointless (though I was tempted by the Ben & Jerry’s).

Of course, the Tesco management team might feel differently about all this but certainly the monobrowed, blue tabarded young ruffian I spoke to on the DVD aisle last week seemed totally oblivious to the fact that I had just set off all of their door alarms several times as I nipped in and out of the building just to check that, yes, it was me that was setting off the alarms even though I hadn’t actually at that point made a single purchase from Tesco.

I had bought something tasty from Argos though. A nice gadget thing which I can’t talk about here because it’s for my wife’s birthday in a fortnight. Seems the demagnetizer / security device remover thingy had failed to work as I picked up my product from collection point B. Not that I set off any alarms when I exited Argos though.

However, it was definitely my wife’s gift that had set off the Tesco alarms because I swang the bloody thing a couple of times in front of the door alarms just to be doubly sure. Anybody seen me performing that act would have wondered where the hell Goliath was hiding.

Swing – beep beep beep! Swing – beep beep beep!

Definitely me.

And the British public being mindful of Law & Order and swollenly turgid with moral rectitude and righteous fibre did, to a man, not rush towards me en masse and pin me to the floor with a shining example of citizen’s arrestmanship.

Nobody batted a single eyelid. Though one woman did flick some stray hair back up into her monumentally anachronistic beehive.

Oh well, I’m in Ronnie Biggs heaven, I thought and got on with purchasing my goods from Tesco. I paid for them and then ensured I got given a receipt because I knew what was coming next when I tried to exit the store.

Beep beep beep!

Yes, me again. This time with a Tesco bag in my hand as well as the one from Argos. Look people! Proof my grubby hands have been pawing the goods and chattels of the Tesco Corporation! Arrest me! Let me feel that heartless hand on my shoulder (a push – and it’s over). Full body cavity search! Good cop bad cop interview with Officer Krupt! I’m going down for a long stretch (6 months is a long time).

But no. Not a dickie-bird. Nobody gave a rat’s arse.

I did the decent thing being (a) tied to a moral compass of my own making and (b) stupid and approached the aforementioned member of staff.

“I think I’m setting off your alarms,” I said.

He gave me that kind of look that says, yes, I thought you looked like a weirdo. He just shrugged and said something about a fault and that I ought to just keep walking and the alarms would stop in a few seconds.

What I wouldn’t give to hear my bank manager say that to me. I could give up the ruddy pantomime with the balaclava and the sawn-off and never have to threaten anybody ever again. (I know, I know, but where would I get my kicks then?)

So I left the store.

Beep beep beep.

Only after I was heading down the street did I kick myself for the missed opportunity. I was in the DVD aisle when I spoke to Mr Poirot. I could have stuffed a load into my bag when his back was turned (or even when it wasn’t) and made off with a goodly haul.

I even briefly considered pulling the same scam in the other stores on the high street. Beep beep beep! Sorry – it’s this thing I’ve bought from Argos; it’s setting off your alarms... mind if I have a look around your nice store...?

But I just couldn’t be bothered.

What’s the point?

The knickers in Leamington are crap.

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.