Last month, a barrel planter disappeared from our front garden.
Said planter was, by all reckoning, rubbish. It had been falling apart since before we moved in and had degenerated to the point that I was planning to call the estate agent and ask if it was OK to dispose of it (since it was technically the landlord’s property). Before I got around to it, I arrived home from work one day to find it had vanished.
We wondered whether the landlord had stopped by and disposed of it. Or the agents. They pleaded ignorance. We then wondered whether our neighbours had gotten rid of it in an over-zealous attempt to keep the garden tidy (this may seem extreme, but they do have a habit of mowing our lawn if it gets too long for their taste, which is to say, anything over 4cm). They knew nothing. There was only one explanation left.
Someone nicked it.
Someone nicked a decrepit, rusted barrel planter, complete with low-grade soil, in broad daylight, and didn’t leave a speck of dirt behind. That last part in itself was impressive given that the planter had fallen apart so badly that I myself had wondered how I was going to move it without throwing soil everywhere. The planter was previously covering an ugly manhole cover, which was so tidy it almost looked swept clean. The planter was also too heavy for one person to move, let alone carry any significant distance, so whoever took it must have come prepared with a second person and a vehicle.
Since it was, as I say, the landlord’s property, I prudently reported it to the police, so we could not be later accused of the wanton destruction of inventory from the house. Would the local constabulary nod knowingly, informing me of a spate of garden planter thefts across the county? No. They were equally baffled. The only explanations they could offer was that it was stolen for a) the wood, which was worthless or b) the soil, which was also in pretty bad shape. They proffered no theory for the tidiness of the job.
The mystery remained, though lost its intrigue after a couple of days. Then came some real hilarity a week later. Shortly after arriving home one day, I received a phone call from Victim Support.
They wanted to know how I was feeling. Literally, that was the exact question I was asked. They’d been told we’d had a theft, as is TVP policy, and presumably wondered if I been left distraught by the loss of such a precious item. I would barely stop laughing; probably not the usual response their support workers are used to. They clearly hadn’t been informed of the triviality of the incident, and I let them get back to people who had actually had something bad happen to them.
I week after that, I got a precisely written form letter from the police, regretfully informing me that “the offender(s) have not been identified” and that “a decision has therefore been made to close the case”. They did assure me that they would re-examine the case if a serial plant-pot snaffler was one day brought to justice, but until then, the mystery lives on.
