4
May
2016
By Calvin at 10:13 GMT, 7 years ago
I was sat in the barber shop yesterday waiting for my turn doing the Sun cryptic crossword and drinking my free Nescafé when I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation between the barber and the bloke in the chair.
“How did he get in?” asked Steve the barber.
“He smashed the driver’s door window” replied the bloke.
“Did it happen last night?” enquired the barber whilst snipping away.
“Yeah, and what’s worse I knew I’d left me leather jacket and ten boxes of those e-fag cartridges on the back seat. I could [effing] kick myself, because I should have taken them out, but I was well into a film and then when I thought about it again I was just too knackered and thought they’d be alright for one night; just my luck.”
“What do you reckon Calvin?” asked Steve “You’re ex Old Bill; do you think luck had anything to do with it?”
Looking up from the clue for ten across I said “Well, I suppose luck did have a small part to play, but not because you were unlucky; more because you made the thief’s luck. That’s because your decision not to go out to the car coincided with the one night in the month, or maybe the year, that this particular thief walked along your particular street and looked into your car. It’s a pain, I know, but that’s the thing about this type of crime. I’ll tell you what though; I’ll look up the definition of luck on my phone”
I googled ‘definition of luck’ and up it came. I read it out to them both. “Luck is success or failure apparently brought about by chance rather than through one's own actions.”
“So, by that definition”, I continued “luck had nothing to do with it at all. It was your own actions, or rather lack of action to remove the stuff from the car, that resulted in the crime”
The bloke shuffled a little in the chair. “Lucky you came in here to explain that to me, aren’t I” he responded, trying to make light of it.
“Nah”, said the barber “Luck’s got nothing to do with it!”
This type of theft from a car is extremely common and yet is probably one of the easiest to prevent. Ask yourself this: Would you leave something of value in a glass box sitting on the front lawn overnight? Of course you wouldn’t, but leaving stuff on show in a car is almost the same thing. Theft of valuable property from a car has little to do with being unlucky, it’s about being forgetful or lethargic or just plain stupid. Mind you; I wouldn’t have said that to the bloke in the chair.
Preventing car crime: http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/vehicle-and-bike-security/505/vehicle-security/
