When your phone is so old, the thief gives it back

On Sunday evening, Himself was texting me from a street near the Embankment when he heard a moped. Assuming it was on the road, he didn’t look up from his screen. A second later, he found himself spinning around as the phone was snatched from his hand and the thief, who had deftly mounted the pavement, made his getaway. Such crimes are so common in central London that police now talk about an “epidemic”.

What happened next is more unusual. Having had a moment to assess his ill-gotten gains, the moped menace threw the mobile over his shoulder, allowing Himself to retrieve it and complete the text.

“If it had been your new iphone X, he’d have kept it,” he reported with grim satisfaction. “But because it was my crummy old one, he

‘A frugal refusal to upgrade from a battered, outdated device saved the day.’

chucked it back at me in disgust!”

The kids are always telling Daddy off for sticking with pitiful antiquated technology. Mind you, “old” is a relative term to the young. It means something you’ve had for, ooooh, as long as three years. On this occasion, a frugal refusal to upgrade from a cracked, battered, outdated device saved the day. There’s a moral in there somewhere.

And who knew that moped menaces were quite so discerning?