There I was, strolling towards the big Sainsbury’s for milk on Friday only to pause outside Savers in Crystal Palace because I could hear a commotion going on inside: shouting, banging, the rattle of coins being shaken in a till. I stuck my head through the shop door and saw a big guy in a grey tracksuit robbing it, trying to get to the cash across the counter. Baskets of cotton wool pads and hand soap had been thrown to the floor, and the staff had hit the alarm but, even standing in the doorway, the siren sounded pitiful - a noise frankly less threatening than my phone alarm.
Beside me, an older woman stopped and rolled her eyes at the commotion going on inside. ‘Shall I call the police?’ I asked, my phone in my hand. She shrugged.
I was torn. Calling the police felt like the sensible, helpful thing to do in the situation. But how long would they take to arrive? And maybe they’d been called already? Was I about to interfere in a situation that I should steer well clear or?
Should I take a video, was my other, perhaps less sensible thought. Maybe I should stand here in the doorway of Savers like a vigilante, taking a video or photos that could be helpful to the police if and when they arrived. But also, would I get knifed?
Moments later, clearly unable to get any cash from the till, the robber gave up and strolled out again, and here’s an extraordinary thing: he didn’t even bother to run. He emerged looking a bit disgruntled, then walked past us and fell into step with a pal who’d been loitering outside. I watched them slowly walk down the high street together, practically whistling, as if the big guy had only nipped into Savers for a family pack of toothbrushes. This man had just caused a major and fairly terrifying scene in Savers, and the poor staff were now scrabbling on their hands and knees, picking up the stuff he’d kicked and thrown to the floor, but he was clearly unafraid of any repercussion.
I did take a photo at that point, although then the big guy turned and looked at me, and I quickly lowered my phone, knowing this wasn’t my best ever idea. And what was I going to achieve with a picture, anyway? Some sense of middle-class smugness at giving the police a terrible photo of the back of a suspect? Well done, Sophia, you’ve really done your bit! The police still hadn’t arrived by this point but, worried that I’d been seen taking a photo, I darted into Sainbury’s to buy my milk, feeling safer among numerous shoppers. Then I walked home checking over my shoulder. Some copper I’d make.
Actually, that was the second of two incidents I witnessed in Crystal Palace last week. A couple of days earlier, in the Tesco Express on Anerley Hill, I’d gone in to buy yet more milk (I work from home; I drink 900 cups of tea a day), and had to step between the security guard and a man with a dog, who’d been stopped in the entrance for trying to nick several packets of steak. I literally stepped through them in the doorway like a Richard Curtis character - ‘Excuse me, sorry, excuse me, I’m so sorry’ - paid for my milk and stepped through them to leave again as they continued to shout about the steak.
Incidents like this are on the rise for obvious reasons. Figures last week revealed that shoplifting in England and Wales is at a 20-year high. Increasingly ludicrous items are tagged with security labels (Lurpak; Nescafe; boxes of Maltesers), but on it goes. A couple of weeks ago in Birmingham, when a couple of lads strolled into a newsagents with a machete and demanded cash, the shopkeeper bravely ran around the back of them, got outside and managed to close the door, locking the pound-shop ninjas in the shop (until they clambered through the shop’s back window and escaped). There’s pretty eye-popping CCTV footage of it HERE if you like.
According to another shopkeeper who runs a chain of Co-ops in Hampshire, the police have told him they won’t investigate anymore unless the theft is over £200 and there’s clear CCTV footage. Shoplifting, says this Co-Op boss, has effectively been decriminalised. It doesn’t sound dissimilar to what happens when you get your phone pinched, as mine was a year or so ago. You can report it to the police, and indeed you have to report it for a crime number if you’re insured, but nothing else will happen. The police can’t possibly investigate every iPhone that gets nicked, just as they’re struggling to deal with every shoplifter now.
So what happens? Dunno. There’s a popular line I’ve seen doing the rounds on Twitter, which says ‘If you see someone shoplifting baby formula, no you didn’t.’ In other words, theft of items like baby formula and nappies don’t count. Some counter that, actually, drug dealers nick baby formula to chop with their wares, so it absolutely should be reported. Is theft theft, whether it’s cash from a till or Aptamil? If you see something like the above happen, what *should* you do? Leave it well alone for your own safety? Or is that making the problem worse? Are we tacitly allowing this boom in shoplifting if we turn a blind eye? It feels depressing to do literally nothing but again, not being Crocodile Dundee, I’m not sure what I reckon I could usefully do.
I was mugged many years ago, and even now can reduce certain disloyal friends to tears (of laughter) by recreating the whimpering noise that I made while the teenager pulled my bag off my arm (he was a teenager and he eventually got 18 months in juvenile detention). You imagine being brave and fighting back in certain scenarios, and then you find yourself in such a scenario and act completely differently. I went back into Savers, anyway, and said I had a photo of the big guy, but they looked a bit sad when I showed them the back of an entirely unidentifiable man in a grey tracksuit, walking away with his hood pulled up. Really useful to the police, no doubt, although when I went back in yesterday, they still hadn’t sent anyone to speak to the staff four days on.
Picture of the week
More cheerfully, Paul and I went to Kent on Friday night to see my sister, and stayed in a nearby B&B. We were met by the owner, pushing a wheelbarrow in the garden, who told us about his five cats and the spaniel, called Nutmeg. He showed us into the house - bearing in mind this is LATE APRIL - and there, in the hallway, was a large Christmas tree. Still up, still all its lights on. ‘Oh! Your Christmas tree is still up,’ I said, somewhat taken aback. ‘No no no,’ he clarified, pointing out a few ceramic eggs, ‘that’s our Easter tree.’ The couple who run this B&B never take down their Christmas tree, it turns out. It stays up in the hallway, all year round. Before the weekend, I’d considered booking The Pig hotel round the corner until I realised a) how expensive it was b) they only accept two-night bookings on the weekend anyway. But why book The Pig, when you can stay in a slightly eccentric B&B with a Christmas-slash-Easter tree, five cats, several chickens, a spaniel called Nutmeg AND two donkeys that thrust their heads through your car window? Way more entertaining.
Recommendations of the week
Three Men And A Little Lady
When I got home from Kent on Sunday, feeling a tiny bit delicate after a friend’s 40th on Saturday night, I flopped on the sofa and saw this was on ITV. Be still my heart! It’s (probably) in my top three favourite films ever, along with Sense and Sensibility and International Velvet. Tom Selleck! Tom Selleck’s moustache! Ted Danson! Liver mousse! A batty old butler in his long johns! FIONA SHAW! Mighty erections! God, it’s heaven - sweet, funny, cliched, old-fashioned, just wonderful. Paul hadn’t seen it so poor man had to sit through the whole thing while I sobbed. A proper 1990s classic and one of those rare sequels which is better than the original film (Three Men And A Baby). Very thrillingly, I’ve just discovered that a third film, Three Men and A Bride, has apparently been in the works for some time with Zac Efron (really?) attached, but nothing seems to have come of it so far. If they can round up Tom Selleck and Ted Danson and reunite the gang I will SCREAM.
Mimi Dickson.
Last week I had to buy a present for the 40th birthday party mentioned above and I thought of Mimi Dickson. I have two of her incredibly joyful prints in my kitchen and I LOVE them. She’s an East London based artist who paints little table scenes, although not exclusively little table scenes, but those are the ones I have in my kitchen and that’s what I bought as a present last week.
Her prints make *exceptionally* good presents not only because people love them but because they’re extremely reasonable. I’m hoping that nobody I’ve given a Mimi print is reading this but they’re £15 each, and then all you need to do is buy a nice frame. Altogether, that makes a REALLY adored present for £25-£30, which I don’t think is bad, right? She’s also a very lovely person and student nurse. Find Mimi’s website HERE.
Nonsense of the week
Urgh. A pocket watch that once belonged to JJ Astor, the richest man to die in the Titanic disaster, has just sold for a ‘record’ price of £1.75m. The pocket watch has now beaten the price paid in 2013 for the violin played by the bandmaster on the ship (£1.1m) and become, as the Telegraph reported yesterday, ‘the most valuable piece of memorabilia from the ship’. Alongside the pocket watch, the empty violin case was also sold at an auction on Sunday, a snip at £360,000.
I cannot bear this mawkish obsession with that ship, the grim (and dangerous) attempts to go down to the seabed and see it, and the obsession with spending gargantuan amounts of money on artefacts from it. I was pottering about at home last week with the telly on, ahead of the weekend’s auction, and I heard a reporter suggest that violin case ‘may have been used’ by the bandmaster as a buoyancy aid when the ship went down. Maybe…but maybe not!
And when do you bring these peculiar artefacts out, anyway? Imagine going for dinner with someone and they say, ‘Hey, here’s a fun idea, do you wanna have a look at a gold pocket watch that once belonged to the richest man on the Titanic?’ IMAGINE going for a date with someone, going home with them, and then they bring out a battered old violin case and tell you that it ‘may have been used’ by the poor bandmaster as a makeshift rubber ring. A red flag if ever I saw one.
‘The results demonstrate the ongoing fascination of the Titanic story 112 years after she sank,’ declared the auctioneer, after the sale. Well, exactly. Some people need to get a grip.
I do agree with you re JJ Astor's watch, but wasn't surprised.. The Rest is History podcast (brilliant, btw!) had a series about the Titanic recently and I was taken aback by how gripping it was. I really recommend it.
Thanks for the link to Mimi D's prints.. Marmite, a Moka, old Penguins of The Pursuit of Love and I Capture The Castle.. I feel seen!
I've never heard of an Easter tree, but my local council only just took down the foil Christmas-tree decorations from the lamp posts on King Street, so you may be on to something!