I regret all my thieving except only one.
I confess to having had a bit of kleptomania when I was growing up.
My brother and I started shoplifting from about the aged of 8, the usual sweets and chocolate. The very first was Turkish delight which I blackmailed my brother over till I started with a peppermint cream. As time progressed we became a great team, one of us distracting while the other helped himself to whatever came to hand. We were brazen in that after stuffing a good selection in our pockets we would pay for one item and always got away with it.
By the time of secondary school, and gotten very good at it. We had a paper round at the same shop (the Warren, bottom of Wote street Basingstoke), and while the owners were out front, we would collect our pile of papers for delivery put it in the bag and walk out, we got jars of sweets and chocolate and but had progressed to nicking cigarettes (we were selling them at school) not just single packets but the wrapped 200 type.
Mr Watson had clearly gotten wise that something was awry as so much stuff was going missing and after exiting with 200 Rothmans king size, I was stopped by Mr. Watson ‘just checking you have the right papers’ and my heart stopped, I opened my bag and he looked and found nothing. Clearly puzzled he walked back into the shop shaking his head.
How had he not found an item as large as that? Easy, you put the brick of fags laid across the bottom and stack the papers end on as normal, with a full bag he was expecting to see it and all there was on view were the papers even when he moved them they were still easily concealed from view. I did exactly the same the following day with 200 players No6.
All this did was to bolster my invincibility and Saturday’s were the days to go on a ‘nicking spree’ in the town centre.
We never targeted Woolies or any of the bigger stores as they always had store detectives but smaller busier shops, especially newsagents, were good targets. Nudey mags were very sought after as they were easily sold and a high value item, difficult to reach the top shelf but one us would buy a paper and in passing would pass to and put the mag into the paper and walk out, timing and distraction again were key to successful thievery.
But the one I remember most was from Cordings , a sports and toy shop at the top of the town, where I bagged a huge Hornby train set and as I was walking out with it I picked up a cricket ball from the display by the door and continued on out.
I also started a craze for nicking pen sets from WH Smiths but when the police came to the school and interviewed everyone about where they had got them from I knew the game was up and stopped shoplifting. Apart from the cider thefts from the Bulmer’s warehouse in Popley and ‘collecting’ the car badges.
The money made from by juvenile criminality meant very little and twoccing or burglary never interested me. Looking back I got a huge buzz from doing it, and it was getting into music, drinking and becoming a punk rocker that changed my burgeoning criminal career.

Years later I was out for a nights heavy drinking with my best friend and his university student girlfriend and her friends in Canterbury and was I was so utterly drunk that when one of the particularly lovely girls expressed an interest in the cute Garfield that was stuck to the window of a card shop on the high street, I kicked the window in and nicked it for her. It was the start of our relationship. But TCALSS, 22 years and 4 children later Mrs. N and I are still together, all the other criminality I really do regret but I have none whatsoever about the criminal damage and nicking the Garfield.
My Brother later became a policeman and when he left, he was a store detective for woolworths for a while, all that practice made him very good at it.

Apologies for the length, I realise I have also stolen your time.
(nimrodihnio making gravy for one., Thu 2 Sep 2010, 10:11, 1 reply)

Love the Garfield story
You old Romantic, you
( LemonEntryMyDearWatson This time, Moriarty, the hand is on the other foot, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 12:25, closed)