Weston-super-Mare Gnomes
In Weston-super-Mare one night a number of years ago myself and a mischievous chum came down with a bout of kleptomania, presumably caused by the imbibition of huge excesses of alcohol. Homeward-bound from a night of debauchery in a strange residential area, a garden gnome was espied, then retrieved, from some unsuspecting resident's front garden. We decided the gnome was to be our pet, and that I would be the first to enjoy our "shared custody" of him.

The next evening, my guilt and regret for this act of theft made unbearable by my still-present hangover, I figured the best bet would be to return "Dave T. Gnome" (his new moniker) home under the cover of night... A "drive-by gnome re-homing", if you will. On the drive there I passed my friend from the evening prior and stopped to give him a lift home. Unfortunately the combination of his mischievous willfulness and my carefree attitude led to us not returning Dave, but instead driving the streets for hours, scouting for more gnomes to purloin.

Our reprehensible gnome-thieving behaviour continued off-and-on for about five weeks, at the end of which, in addition to Dave, we had accumulated some thirty-two gnomes and various garden ornaments of similar nature. These were all of varying sizes (I definitely remember we had two stone tortoises - one the size of my hand and one about a foot high which took all my strength to lift).

As I was too lazy to move them after their filching, they had remained in the boot of my car. This made it particularly awkward when driving as roundabouts and tight corners shifted the weight enough to make the rear-end "kick out" a little at anything over 15 MPH. So I had to somehow get rid of them, surreptitiously.

Of course, we didn't actually want these things, and a few weeks later, thinking it was time they were returned but realising I couldn't remember where each came from, I drove at 3a.m. to a local park, where I made several trips offloading them. After half-an-hour I had carefully arranged them all in a single small area amongst the bushes.

The following week, a half-page article on page three of the local paper reported that a young girl who was playing in the park was delighted when she had stumbled upon the sight of thirty-odd garden gnomes and various stone creatures placed as if talking to each other at a cocktail party. The reporter couldn't explain where the heavy stone ornaments had come from or why they'd been put there and appealed for any resident of the town who was missing a garden decoration to call the newspaper to have it returned. I was happy that these folks would have their gnomes back, relieved that my friend and I wouldn't be getting reprimanded for it, and quietly proud that I'd made the paper (albeit anonymously). A silly, perhaps idiotic, thing to do, but hopefully reading the story brightened some folks' day.

Length? What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick... apparently. :)
( kitaro is all, like, "Nifty Biscuits" 'n that..., Sat 16 Jan 2010, 19:13, 2 replies)

While working in m' library one day
A woman came up to me with a book of garden gnomes from our sale cart. She told me that when her daughter went off to college, her daughter got into the habit of driving around at night, nabbing garden gnomes off neighbor's lawns and stowing them in the trunk of her car. When her daughter came home to visit over a long weekend, her mother opened the trunk to find twenty garden gnomes staring up at her. Twenty pairs of beady little gnome eyes.

I don't know, maybe collecting other people's garden gnomes reduces stress.
(StarryWisdom, Sun 17 Jan 2010, 6:53, closed)

This
made me giggle like an idiot. :) *click*
(idle insomniac enjoys listening to Sigur Rós at stupid hours, Sun 17 Jan 2010, 20:52, closed)