A thief gets a good telling off!

I suddenly found some fight inside me today. Rather peculiarly, as I wandered through my hallway, I caught a glimpse of some hands on the other side of the see-through catflap. I then saw a bundle of flyers and thought little of it (this being Londinium we get so many leaflets shoved through our door, they fill our recycling bins alone!). And then I thought I'd go and bother him as I hate leafleteers, and lo and behold, as I opened the door he pegged it, with the contents of a parcel in his hands. He'd only gone and stolen some post of ours that the postman so unkindly just left on the doorstep!

So there I was, in my slippers, running up the hill after him, calling him all manner of names. And in my Herefordshire country accent too! What a sight it must have been - I can imagine the Wurzels writing a song about it. And then he stopped and started to approach me. He was much bigger than me, but my flight or fight response said "tell him off!", so I did. At first he said he hadn't taken anything, then I told him I watched him do it and asked him exactly what he thought he was doing. Eventually, he rather sheepishly pulled out the robbings from his pocket. I work for a PC magazine in my dayjob, so to see that all he'd stolen was a USB memory key that was destined for my girlfriend was rather galling (there was me putting my life on the line for something we have a gazillion of!).

He didn't say sorry, he just shrugged and I returned to my house angry and insensed. When I walked in I found the flyer he'd delivered, so I rang the place and dobbed on him - I suddenly felt like a school prefect again. (I should mention here that I did call the local police, but they put me on hold for 10 minutes, and when they connected me somehow managed to cut me off! I couldn't be bothered waiting again). The pizza place knew who he was and they said they'd tell him off, which made me feel happy. There's nothing like telling someone off in absentia.

So the moral of the day is not to hire a person to deliver leaflets about your takeaway, if the very same person is going to run a little takeaway scheme of their own at the same time. It won't get you customers, I can assure you.