You know you’re old when even grannies start mugging you

IWAS walking to my mum’s flat on Wednesday when an elderly woman accosted me. ‘Hello!’ she called, grinning and waving a cane at me. ‘I know you. Off the telly!’ I stopped. ‘Give me a hug!’

It’s not often I find a fan or someone so happy to meet me, so I held out my arms. She enveloped me in a fumbling bear hug. We had a chat, then went our separate ways.

When I was in the lift, I realised my iPhone had vanished from my anorak. I rushed back outside. No sign of the old woman. Ran to the police station. ‘I’ve just been mugged,’ I said to the woman there, who sighed and said: ‘I’d just report it online.’

Ran home. Found iPad. Opened the Find My iPhone app and soon discovered that my precious device, the first thing I’d save in a house fire after the photo albums, was making its way down Kensington Church Street.

At this point the full horror of what I was facing began to sink in. I’d have to call my network provider to report it stolen and then wait for a new phone. I’d also, of course, lose all those photos, contacts, calendar entries, texts. As my husband said to me the other day: ‘There are three of us in this marriage: you, me and your iPhone.’

I jumped into the car and started following the moving blue blob on my iPad. And then, of course, I lost signal. I had to park, go into a cafe and connect. It was while I was doing that that the kind waitress asked: ‘Have you rung the police?’ And then things speeded up. Two minutes later a panda car with blue flashing lights doubleparked outside. ‘Hop in the back,’ I was told. One officer logged my iPad onto his hot spot (or something) and the blue blob was back. ‘Put your seat belt on,’ the other officer said, and turned on the siren (it was hard not to go ‘nee naw nee naw’ with excitement) and we screamed off. ‘Description of suspect?’ he asked, as we shot red lights and drove on the wrong side of the road at top speed.

‘Woman,’ I panted. ‘Between 60 and 65, I’d say. Hard to tell. Hat. Dark glasses. With a cane.’ Then it hit me. I’d been mugged by gangsta granny.

We found her half a mile away. ‘On your left!’ I said, my heart pounding. We pulled up, and the officers got out.

‘Yes, I have the phone,’ she admitted. ‘She gave me a hug and my hat came off, and she picked it up and her phone fell out of her pocket.’

‘Why didn’t you give it back?’ the officers asked. ‘Or hand it in?’ ‘I was going to… tomorrow,’ she said.

One cop got back into the car. ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked. Did I really want to take things further? What if she did intend to give the phone back?

‘Nothing,’ I said, feeling magnanimous. ‘My instinct too,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t got a record, we’ve got her name and address and, as she has a 1965 birthday, she’s not exactly going to start a life of crime at her age, is she?’

I was trying not to gasp. Gangsta granny was exactly my age! It began to dawn on me that the handsome young policemen thought I was a nice old dear who had to be humoured too, especially when one said with a grin: ‘She asked me for a hug too – and I’ve still got my phone!’ I’ll try not to hold on to that thought.