Thursday, March 06, 2008
Have you heard the one about the "reverse bicycle theft"?
In England "Have you heard the one...?" is usually the introduction to someone telling a joke. Well in this case, the story is not a joke but I think it is funny, or at least a little strange. I'll share it with you all, after all, you may as well share my amusement.
As any regular readers will be aware, I travel around the Britain on business quite a lot. When I'm at home (in England, rather than Ireland) I live, on my own, in a small terraced house in a London suburb. I sometimes refer to my home in London as "the London office". At present I'm working quite a distance from home (over a hundred miles), so naturally I stay away during the working week.
I normally park my car on a paved area in front of my house. It's my property, so I just reverse from the street, over the pavement and onto the area where I park my car. Two weeks ago, I returned from work late Friday evening to find that someone had left a bicycle leaning against a post at the boundary of my property, with half of it sticking over the area space I normally drive through. My first reaction was: "that's a bit inconsiderate". So, I got out of the car and went to move the bike. To my surprise I found that it was padlocked to the post. Fortunately, there was enough space to squeeze the car past the bike, so I parked my car, unpacked and thought no more about it.
The following day when I got up the bicycle was still there. My street is reasonably friendly, so the obvious thing to do was ask my niehbours if it was anything to do with them (even though, in both cases it seemed a bit unlikely). Naturally, they knew nothing about it: one said; "we thought it belonged to a friend of yours", the other said; "that's funny, because it's been there for several days".
Being a law-abiding citizen I phoned the police to ask what I was allowed to do with the bike. They weren't particularly interested (bicycle theft they understand, bicycle gift leaves them a bit puzzled), and frankly I don't blame them. As far as anyone could tell, no crime had been committed, there was no practical way for me to trace the owner and the worst thing that had happened was that I'd been mildly inconvenienced. The only suggestions the police could come up with were
i) leave a sign on it saying "please take me away", and
ii) the part of it which was on my property, I could do pretty much what I liked with, and
iii) the part on the pavement I could report to my council as "fly-tipped waste".
The fact that both parts were inseparably connected and chained to my my gatepost made approaching the council seem a bit irrelevant.
I put the phone down, feeling that I had made little or no progress, but I decided to take up the police suggestion and put a notice on the bike, and then I got on with the rest of my weekend and went back to Bristol on Monday (with the bike still attached to the post).
Another week, another dollar later and I returned from Bristol to find the Bike was still there. A few minutes with a junior hacksaw later and the bike was released from its shackles and wheeled into my back-garden. If any of you are concerned with bicycle security, take my work for it, some of the cheaper cable-type locks are very easy to remove. So, there you have it: I have become the keeper (if not the legal owner) of an aluminium framed mountain bike. Maybe it isn't brand new, and maybe it was never the absolute top of the range, but I have it, I paid nothing for it and it functions.
My wife reckons that I should view this as a sign that I should take more exercise. I may take up the suggestion, after all, what have I got to lose? ...a bicycle!
As any regular readers will be aware, I travel around the Britain on business quite a lot. When I'm at home (in England, rather than Ireland) I live, on my own, in a small terraced house in a London suburb. I sometimes refer to my home in London as "the London office". At present I'm working quite a distance from home (over a hundred miles), so naturally I stay away during the working week.
I normally park my car on a paved area in front of my house. It's my property, so I just reverse from the street, over the pavement and onto the area where I park my car. Two weeks ago, I returned from work late Friday evening to find that someone had left a bicycle leaning against a post at the boundary of my property, with half of it sticking over the area space I normally drive through. My first reaction was: "that's a bit inconsiderate". So, I got out of the car and went to move the bike. To my surprise I found that it was padlocked to the post. Fortunately, there was enough space to squeeze the car past the bike, so I parked my car, unpacked and thought no more about it.
The following day when I got up the bicycle was still there. My street is reasonably friendly, so the obvious thing to do was ask my niehbours if it was anything to do with them (even though, in both cases it seemed a bit unlikely). Naturally, they knew nothing about it: one said; "we thought it belonged to a friend of yours", the other said; "that's funny, because it's been there for several days".
Being a law-abiding citizen I phoned the police to ask what I was allowed to do with the bike. They weren't particularly interested (bicycle theft they understand, bicycle gift leaves them a bit puzzled), and frankly I don't blame them. As far as anyone could tell, no crime had been committed, there was no practical way for me to trace the owner and the worst thing that had happened was that I'd been mildly inconvenienced. The only suggestions the police could come up with were
i) leave a sign on it saying "please take me away", and
ii) the part of it which was on my property, I could do pretty much what I liked with, and
iii) the part on the pavement I could report to my council as "fly-tipped waste".
The fact that both parts were inseparably connected and chained to my my gatepost made approaching the council seem a bit irrelevant.
I put the phone down, feeling that I had made little or no progress, but I decided to take up the police suggestion and put a notice on the bike, and then I got on with the rest of my weekend and went back to Bristol on Monday (with the bike still attached to the post).
Another week, another dollar later and I returned from Bristol to find the Bike was still there. A few minutes with a junior hacksaw later and the bike was released from its shackles and wheeled into my back-garden. If any of you are concerned with bicycle security, take my work for it, some of the cheaper cable-type locks are very easy to remove. So, there you have it: I have become the keeper (if not the legal owner) of an aluminium framed mountain bike. Maybe it isn't brand new, and maybe it was never the absolute top of the range, but I have it, I paid nothing for it and it functions.
My wife reckons that I should view this as a sign that I should take more exercise. I may take up the suggestion, after all, what have I got to lose? ...a bicycle!
# posted by tom_gillies @ 1:55 PM 
