CNPS numbers spotted 4 (867).
I returned south of the river for dinner in Clapham with some friends. Having got used to sophisticated, crime-free Shepherd's Bush, I had forgotten what a den of iniquity Clapham can be.
We were having a late dinner on the High Street, when the friend next to suddenly became aware that her bag was missing. She had had it slung over the back of her seat, but now it was gone. She had sensed something was wrong, but by the time it properly registered the bag and whoever had taken it were gone.
The restaurant were very sympathetic and the manager took us into a little back room to cancel her credit card and phone. He showed us the grainy CCTV footage of the crime taking place. A couple had come into the restaurant and taken the table next to ours, but had said they were waiting for friends. Then they got up to leave and the man slipped his coat over the back of my friend's chair and managed to pick both it and the bag up and abscond. The CCTV footage showed that she reacted almost immediately, but alas too late.
Obviously this was a monumental pain in the arse for her and what had the thief really got out of it? There had been twenty pounds in the bag and a phone and credit card that were going to be usuable for a maximum of ten minutes (and it did take a while to get through to Barclaycard so perhaps there was a window of opportunity). I suppose twenty pounds is better than nothing, but there must be easier ways to make a living. And as a strategy it's fairly high risk, banking on the (correct) assumption that a Friday night table of friends are likely to be pretty drunk and unlikely to notice. The footage of them wasn't brilliant, but would be good enough for someone to recognise them again if they spotted them in the vicinity. I suppose they sometimes get more than twenty pounds, but as with a lot of crime the inconvenience to the victim outranks the financial gain made my the criminal.
On the plus side for us the restaurant gave us about two free bottles of wine and on the plus side for my friend I ended up paying for her meal and her taxi home. So she actually comes out of the whole thing slightly up. I wonder if she was in cahoots with the "criminals" or whether me and the restaurant were the true victims here.
I was going to text her the next morning to check she was OK. But then I realised there wasn't much point. I couldn't even check up on the bag thieves as the phone had been cut off. And I'd like to have known they were OK.
