Mugger unprepared for northern feistiness
My girlfriend was coming home from the pictures on her own one Friday night and the train had just pulled into Deptford when a young man walked passed the seat she was in and casually helped himself to her handbag. She immediately shouted “Stop, thief! He’s got my bag!” but of course, it being London nobody stepped up.

She jumped off the train and began running down the platform, pausing to look over her shoulder, naively expecting to see several beefy lads rushing to her aid. No such luck, and this put her out of step so that she fell over spectacularly, skinning her knees, elbows etc and winding herself. Not easily deterred (the new Gucci wallet she had saved for months for was in the bag) she got back up and continued the pursuit.

The young man running off with her bag was actually quite a portly chap and she quickly gained on him, although she did need to climb over some railings (being fairly short) in order to follow him across the roof he was now running along.

Now, she has mild asthma, and when she finally caught him at the other end of the roof she was beginning to wheeze a bit. As she got closer to the mugger, she realised that he was in fact just a kid (no more than 15) and he looked pretty scared when he saw her. Apparently small northern women don’t routinely run muggers down across roofs in South East London.

Anyway, she decided to play on his fear by putting on her wheezing and making it sound much worse than it was to see if she could rattle him further. In between gasps for breath she said, “You’ve got to give me my bag – it’s got my medication in it.” This appeal had the desired effect (must’ve been his first mugging or something) and he meekly handed back her bag. I’d like to say that she proceeded to give him a good kicking, but in actual fact she just sat down and cried while he ran off. That said, the story had a great deal of mileage in the school where she teaches, and she was nicknamed Buffy the Vampire Slayer for weeks.
(oafcmetty Lurking since, Sun 18 Jun 2006, 20:19, Reply)