I notice that instances of “bilking”, ie filling your car’s tank with petrol then driving off without paying, have risen by 200 per cent as fuel prices soar. Interesting. You’d think garage forecourts would be the last place people would do a runner given all the cameras.
Maybe they recall Devon and Cornwall police suggesting in 2015 it wasn’t really a crime. They wouldn’t investigate unless there was “obvious proof of criminal intent”. How does that look? Wearing a striped T-shirt and with a bag marked “swag”? Shouting loudly that “paying is for pussies”?
If you’re considering giving it a whirl, do remember: fortune favours the brazen. At a Co-op station in Tyne and Wear recently a man filled a wheelie bin with £143 of unleaded, didn’t pay and no one stopped him. The CCTV shows him wheeling it away, entirely untroubled.
Why don’t all petrol stations have pay at pump systems requiring you to cough-up first, one might wonder? Well, it’s obvious. How then would they upsell you overpriced crisps, Ginsters pasties, dying carnations and barbecue charcoal in their strip-lit “mini-marts”? They make more on selling coffee than on 40 litres of petrol. Maybe the odd “bilker” is a small price to pay if the majority go large at the sausage roll rack.
Cry away
Did you see BBC newsreader Joanna Gosling breaking down with emotion as she announced that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was finally coming home? I did and it was lovely to watch. Yes, we are supposed to admire newsreaders’ cool, professional detachment but sometimes losing control feels entirely appropriate. I thought the same when Anna Botting’s voice faltered when reporting for Sky News on Madeleine McCann’s disappearance in Portugal in 2007, and when Lorraine Kelly wept while reporting on the Dunblane massacre as she spoke of “16 wee angels and their teacher”. It’s real, it’s humane and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Advertisement
Granny’s sayings
I’m enjoying ITV’s drama Holding, adapted from Graham Norton’s novel, not least because it includes old sayings that remind me of my grandmother. “He’s so cute he could meet himself round the corner” was baffling to a child (does it mean he’s ahead of himself?). “He couldn’t lie in bed straight” seemed easier (he’s bent/deceitful?). Another was, “She’s got two fingers the same length.” It took a while to catch on that “she” was a thief (fingers trapped in the till). “If he went to a wedding he’d wait for the christening” denoted an overstaying guest; “you make a better door than a window” told you to move out of the TV eyeline. Did anyone hear, “She’s like the crows — she’s got high notions”? Why pick on crows? Does anyone know?
Shades of Muttley
In terrible times we take our pleasures where we can. And in an Uber cab the other day my husband and I did just that (no, not that. You’d get a no-star rating).
A car overtook and in the back seat was a labrador with its head out of the window wearing wraparound sunglasses. It looked like Muttley in Wacky Races and it had an instant transformative effect. Everyone — pedestrians, drivers, cyclists — pointed and smiled. People, including us, began filming this moment of simple joy on our phones.
Wasn’t it Noel Gallagher who said the world divides into people who feel uplifted when they see a happy dog with its head out of a car window, and those who don’t? Those in joyless camp two are probably hoping for an approaching tunnel.