The Windows Blue Screen of Death

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has hit me. We do have a new PC, but that isn't broadbanded yet (and won't be, unless BT pull their finger out and actually send me my modem - more snarky phone calls to come today. Humph.) So, I am on dial-up and boy am I noticing the difference.

The vast majority of my files are on the new pc, but the children's extensive itunes collections alas weren't - sadly for them, my even more extensive collection of pony book photographs took priority in the transfer.

And yesterday our until now faithful old PC died. So, if you emailed me after about 4 yesterday afternoon, can you please re-send?

These things go in threes, they say, though actually I think that is rubbish - sometimes it's one, and sometimes it's an endless string. As I had my wallet stolen on Saturday on the Piccadilly Line, I think though that I'm having a goodly share of being made to spend hours on the phone trying to sort stuff out. My bank, I must say, can knock BT into a cocked hat for efficiency. I reported my cards stolen on Saturday and today I have new ones.

The whole thing though was an object lesson in how incredibly good pickpockets are at their horrible job, and how very easy it is to fall victim. I lived in London for years, and I know all about the dodges, and the distractions. We were on a very crowded tube, in the doorway, I was holding my bag in front of me, hand over it, as you're supposed to. Just as the doors were closing a couple leapt on and cannoned into me. And I automatically turned and apologised to the guy I'd fallen against. And that was all it took. Or at least I assume that was it - it was the only time my hand wasn't on my bag.

The police asked me if I wanted Victim Support - I don't feel victimised; it's just one of those things. It was harder I think for my daughter, who was with me, and whose first experience of direct crime it was. She's still at the age when to a large extent she thinks Mum is going to protect her and sort things out, and then there we were, robbed, without either of us having had any idea about it.

The really ironic thing is that I had just bought a new bag, and this is a spectacularly good one for a pickpocket as it has an open top with a press fastening. I can't take it back, as the receipt was in my wallet.

Comments

Jodie Robson said…
Lots of commiserations, both over the PC hassles - appalling how we depend on the blasted things, isn't it? - and over the theft. It happened to me in Genoa(very much my own fault, dreadful tendency to dither and not keep my mind on things) where the police found the idiot Englishwoman highly amusing. Can't imagine what the Italian for Victim Support might be, it certainly wasn't on offer! It sounds as though you at least met with a more sympathetic response.
28 February 2008 at 13:41
Jane Badger said…
Geraniumcat - yes isn't it dreadful how dependent on them we are? When I think that when I was at university we had rather a lofty we'll-never-need-those attitude to computers - humph!

I'm sorry you had your bag filched. It is deeply annoying. As you say, at least I met with sympathy.
28 February 2008 at 14:25
Nan said…
It was sixteen years ago this summer that the same thing happened in London to my husband as we stood in the very crowded car after being switched to another line because of a bomb scare (this would have been an IRA scare in those days). All of a sudden he whispered to me that someone had taken his wallet. We were two days away from leaving England after a month's vacation. We had been there in 1971 and 1977. I don't know how old you are, but London in 1971 was as safe as safe could be, and it was still much the same six years later. But going back in 1992, we found a whole new place, almost like another planet. More crowded, less appealing, and too much like any other city. I actually felt nervous on a long walk to the British Museum. I just told Tom the other day that I would never go back. The countryside, yes, but not London. But then pickpockets have a long history there and everywhere, don't they? It just came as a shock to us.
7 March 2008 at 14:36
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