Do Mind If I Don't #3

Keeping it glassy

I’m on what’s supposed to be a quick work assignment in Thailand, but I arrived in Bangkok and promptly tested positive for covid, so I’ve only seen the inside of my cheap hotel room. This is day six in isolation, but the line on the home test is less red every day, so hopefully I’ll be out this weekend. The glamour of travel, I know. This week, one of the many times I was weirdly mugged. It’s not weird that I was mugged, I just got mugged in weird ways quite a lot. Cheers.

Paul O

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April, 1996

A regular-looking, middle-aged guy stops me just outside Oxford Circus tube station. He’s dressed casually, in a light jacket and jeans, not really any different from what I’m wearing that day. 

He wants a pound. It’s a scam, obviously. Money “for a train ticket home”, one of the more common pretences for shaking people down. If I’m feeling flush, I sometimes even play into the fiction and donate a few coins. I’m in a hurry today, though, and I say I’m sorry, but I don’t have any cash on me. It’s a textbook back and forth, likely happening thousands of times a day in towns all over the world. 

He follows me out of the station and down the street a little, now asking for a cigarette. 

“I don’t smoke,” I say. 

Then something unexpected happens. He quickly snatches my glasses clean off my face. Now, I don’t earn enough to just write off pairs of glasses willy-nilly, so I can’t just walk away. I’m shocked and also a little intrigued as to what’s about to happen. 

“Do you feel vulnerable?” he asks aggressively. “Because that’s how I feel every day.” 

I tell him that I do feel quite vulnerable. This news seems to cheer him up. 

“Let’s go to the cash machine. You get out ten pounds and give it to me and I’ll give you this handful of change,” he says, proffering said handful of change. A quick survey of the coppers suggests I would be well over nine pounds down on the deal. “Or I could just smash your glasses,” he adds, matter-of-factly. It’s nice to have all the options laid out for you, at least. 

I’m too shocked to think of what to do, and so we go to a nearby ATM. Listen, I have also questioned this course of action in the weeks, months and years since it happened. I don’t have any answers. I panicked and I’ve just never been good at thinking on my feet. 

The cash machine is on an annoyingly deserted sidestreet, and as I approach it, my thieving chaperone politely hangs just back out of the range of the security camera. I hesitate over the withdrawal, wondering where everybody in central London has gone all of a sudden. How can these streets be so quiet? Where are any of the alleged eight million people that live here? I would welcome just one person walking past right now as a show of solidarity. Anyone at all. 

Abandoned by the general public, I take as long as I conceivably can, theatrically fumbling with my wallet, pretending to struggle to remember my PIN by squinting and sighing a lot, the whole routine. In the absence of anybody happening by, though, it eventually becomes too socially embarrassing for me NOT to carry on with the transaction. I do what’s necessary and sheepishly hand him a ten pound note. 

I reach, with misguided optimism, for my glasses. 

“It’s still not enough.” 

“But you have…” 

“DON’T MAKE A FUCKING SCENE. I’M ON DRUGS,” he adds, helpfully showing me a bottle of his medication, or at least a small, medical-looking brown bottle with a label on it. It suddenly becomes clear to me that I am being held up with a pair of my own spectacles and a small bottle of what could easily be antacid tablets. I feel very stupid.

“Get another £10 out…my wife’s waiting for me. She’s pregnant. And crying.” 

I think to myself that it isn’t really surprising that she’s upset if she’s having to bring his offspring into the world, but I’m a sucker for a sob story and there’s still, unbelievably, nobody passing by. I resignedly withdraw more cash. 

This inspires the man to open up a little more and talk about himself. 

“I don’t usually beg for money. I sell property in the south of France.” 

I decide not to argue about the accuracy of calling this situation ‘begging’ and instead compliment him sarcastically on a sound career change. 

“Don’t you laugh at me, glasses boy,” he says. 

I do think about arguing the semantics of this, since technically, HE is the glasses boy at this precise moment, but by now I just want this to be over with. I give him ten more pounds. Thankfully, this time he hands over the glasses. 

Our business concluded to his satisfaction, he again becomes the epitome of politeness. 

“Can I take a mailing address so that I can perhaps send the money back to you?” he asks, pulling a pad of paper and a pen out of his back pocket. Medication bottles, stationery, my money…what else does he keep back there? And who keeps a tatty rolodex of the people that they mug? Are we going to keep in touch?  

I write down Sherlock Holmes’ address, curse my inadequacy and the weirdly deserted London streets, and duck back into the tube.