A foreign holiday is not really complete without a stranger trying to subject you to an unsophisticated hustle style con. When I was interrailing round Europe a man with impossibly thick glasses who looked like a Dick Emery character claimed to be a pilot who had had his car broken into and lost his wallet and all his money, but he needed cash to get to petrol to get to the airport and so asked me and Geoff Quigley to buy his genuine Rolex watch. He couldn't have chosen worse marks (perhaps his comedy thick glasses disguise had made him blind) as we were living hand to mouth and stealing pizza off of tables and chocolate from supermarkets ourselves. We didn't fall for it.
Today, whilst walking down the Champs Elysees we passed a man scrabbling round in the dusty soil. It seemed that he had just discovered a lost gold ring, although he did so a little theatrically perhaps, as if to make sure that we hadn't missed the find. We walked on by, as it was nothing to do with us, but he followed us, looking a bit surprised. "Look at this," he told us, showing us a rather chunky and unpleasant ring, oddly thick like it might once have been used in plumbing. "I found it over there."
"Oh," I said, mustering as much faked enthusiasm as possible.
"Someone must have dropped it. Look, it's gold." He showed me the inside of the ring where two square stamps similar to those you'd get on some gold could be seen. But he only gave me a brief look and I am no metallurgist but I reckon it's probably possible to put those on any ring.
"It's not mine," I told him, showing him that I already had a ring and it was more tasteful than his.
"It doesn't fit me," he told me, showing that indeed it was too small for his finger, "I would like you to have it as a gift."
It's taken me over 44 years to get one ring on my finger and I didn't want another one, especially not one off of the floor and especially not if it was gold and clearly precious to someone else. I'd be annoyed if I dropped my ring and then someone picked it up and gave it to a passerby as if that was their right.
"I don't want it, thank you" I said politely, before suggesting, "You should take it to the police."
Maybe this con artist is used to dealing with greedier and much, much more stupid people, but I couldn't see any reason why anyone would take this, nor really how he was going to make money from this enterprise.
He was quite insistent, "Please, you take it, it doesn't fit me." I became a bit less polite, "No, I don't want it." He offered it to my wife, who is more polite than me, but still not an idiot and she didn't take it either. It looked like it might turn nasty but I told him to leave us alone and he walked off very pissed off that we had eschewed his gift of the floor ring.
I watched him as he sloped away and kept my eye on him as we moved on. He went far enough away to think that we wouldn't notice, but then I saw him bending down in front of a bench and miraculously discovering another lost ring in the dirt. The people of Paris are very blase with their jewelry. He held it up to show to some people sitting on the bench and then, the generous benefactor that he was (clearly being unlucky enough to have found another ring that didn't fit him) gave it to the people and moved on.
I didn't think this was a very effective con, but then the man went back to the bench and clearly requested some money, which he was duly given. I suppose the desperate con was that after having received this golden gift people would feel they owed the man something and would give him ten euros if he asked for them. There's no real con there as I suspect all involved would know what was going on. But having accepted the ring there could now be a scene if the man didn't get some money. It's like a game of pretend where surely everyone is aware of the fact that the transaction is an act of charity, though I suspect the man might do better to just ask for money (especially in Paris where it seems people are quite generous to beggars - our cab driver yesterday handed a cigarette to a man at the traffic lights - which I don't think would happen in London). It seems a palaver to go out and procure these rings and stamp them with gold marks - he must get through a few each day.
It left me a bit bamboozled to be honest and I thought about it most of the day. I wonder what kind of a living he makes from this scam and if there is something more to it that I missed. Is there a French superstition that if a stranger gives you a ring then you must accept it?
We walked around Paris for most of the day, spending the afternoon in the Louvre where the queues were long as you might expect on Easter Monday. The building itself is quite amazing and the art is overwhelming, though most people are making a bee line for the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo, both of which, of course, we also went to see. I felt a bit sorry for the many paintings in the same room as the Mona Lisa, as thousands of people were crowding in, but hardly any of them were looking at anything but the woman with the mysterious smile. I almost made a point of going and looking at every other painting and NOT the Mona Lisa, but that would actually make me a bigger loser and I was sucked into the celebrity-like orbit of some pigment on canvas. But I was thinking, you people are idiots - there's a picture of a woman with her top off over there and another one with a man sucking on a lady's bosom and all you get to see of the Mona Lisa is a smile. I suspected this thought made me even more of a loser. But a loser who had seen some boobies.
A vaguely sitcom evening followed as a cab took us to the restaurant that the hotel had booked for us a few months ago. We had been told the eatery was nearby but the cab driver seemed to be taking us a long route, at one point getting on a ring road that seemed to be taking us onto a motorway out of town. Were we being kidnapped? Was this the ring man's long game? Had he somehow marked us out?
No. Eventually we arrived at the restaurant to find it dark and with tables pushed to the sides and the door locked. Which was odd as we had a booking. Thankfully the cab driver had noticed this and not driven off leaving us to fend for ourselves. I didn't have my phone with me, so we returned to the hotel to find out what had happened, spending 35 euro and half an hour of our short honeymoon on this fruitless quest. The taxi con is much better than the ring one.
The hotel claimed the booking had been made, but clearly whoever had taken the booking had failed to spot it was Easter and that the place would be shut. Odd they hadn't rung up to inform the hotel though. But they were all very apologetic and gave us some champagne and booked us in at the last minute to another place, so it wasn't a total disaster.
