Christmas Shoplifting

One of my common law brother in law’s was a bit of a dodgy geezer…come to think of it, they were both dodgy in their own ways.

But Gary was the king of dodgy.

Gary had a car that he loved…did he love it more than my own sister? Probably.

It was a Simca 1100….

A what? I hear you say?

A dodgy French make (apparently)…..but in its defence it was superbly brilliant, the rust held it together where welding just could not compete. It took everything in its stride and just kept on going like a Duracell bunny…not bad for £70!!

Anyhoo…he wanted to do some Christmas shopping, and he needed my help.

So off we went in his beloved Simca…oh what the hell…I loved that car too.

So we went to a town where we weren’t known by anyone to do the shopping…..I pondered this for a while…I soon found out why.

While on the way there I was watching the road pass underneath me…..this car must have been the forbear of the Flintstones’s vehicle, because believe me, you could easily have put your feet on the floor and start it off that way!

Gary was fiddling with the portable radio he had on him…at the same time while driving….no it didn’t have a built in radio/cassette player like the majority of 70’s cars…it wouldn’t have been able to take it…..if it had a radio as well built in there would have been a good chance that a wheel would have fallen off.

He turned the music part of the radio off and started to tune into police reports…..this I considered strange…but not surprising.

We finally got to the town that Gary had picked, as we parked the car wheezed a sign of relief.

The first shop we went into, Gary said he needed some jeans. He took two pairs in a cubicle with him, snipped the tags off and gingerly walked out while wearing them both.

This was before the days of CCTV and big security systems.

He went to a public toilet outside, took them off and shoved them in a carrier bag

In the next shop he genuinely brought some toys for the kids, gave me the money to buy the gifts at the till while he mentioned how nice those pricey watches were situated near the tills.

While I’m giving the person the money for the toys he accidentally dropped one of the watches into a conveniently placed carrier bag as he swapped it with his own wrist watch that didn’t work.

Only one more thing to get, he tells me.

We go into the type of shop that sells everything…possibly even grandmothers (and Gary was the type of person who would have sold his off years ago).

What does Gary want for his pièce de résistance?

A 12 foot long curtain rail….that’s what.

We just walk into the shop, spot the rail that suits his needs, take it out of the wrapping while in the shop, me on one end and him on the other and calmly just walk out of the shop.

I’m expecting to get a hand on my shoulder but nothing happens as we walk towards the super Simca like a couple of unsuccessful cannibals with no dinner dangling down the middle.

We tie the rail onto the top of the grimly green vehicle…how the hell are we going to look inconspicuous now?

I have the radio on my lap while Gary drives the car, both listening out for any mention of a dodgy green car with a bleeding great big rail hanging off it!

Suddenly a police car comes out of a side road, Gary decides to try and do an Italian job in the middle of somewhere in deepest, darkest Hertfordshire as he put his foot down onto the accelerator and nearly puts it through the floor, the engine screams in pain and probably cried a little as it went from 30 to 40 miles per hour in about two minutes….a huge guff of black smoke belching out of the exhaust.

So as we drove off doing our impression of the Wacky Races, the police car calmly went off the other way down the road.

We got home safe and sound, but I made sure never to offer doing that kind of thing again with Gary .

And the car? Unfortunately, the little Simca 1100 didn’t last long after that and it went to the great scrap heap in the sky…it probably couldn’t take any more excitement, and to be honest I don’t blame it.