Some people have stolen part of a freshly laid plastic football pitch in Edinburgh – from a primary school.

http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/crime/thieves-steal-huge-chunk-of-school-football-pitch-1-3851996

Anyone beat that?

A section of the travelling community did that in Aberdeen some time a go they obviously denied it but the local press put up pics of them “enjoying their new grass” in a muddy field they had occupied.

Someone broke into a mates workshop years ago, high value cars in there, tens of thousands worth of tools and gear. All they took was a 3lb ball pein hammer, and 2 scythes.

Someone took up a synthetic wicket in the Borders, seemed odd at the time but now not so.

I had a Husquvarna motorbike stolen from a mates garage, they also stole a tray of dog food, bike was found 400yds down the road crashed through a hedge but no dog food. Who ever took it must of hurt themselves quite badly as there was a bit of blood and torn clothing. They hung onto the tray of dog food.

Not quite bizarre but in true Arnold Layne style someone stole my partner’s g-string from the washing line. Tiny little things, they are*, so it’s entirely plausible that the wind had a hand in it.

Weird because the location is quite remote…

*So small, in fact, that I believe I might have inhaled one by accident once.

We went to a gig in Glasgow years back, someone broke into the car and stole 2 cans of pepsi max and my mate’s university notes, and left everything else. A thirsty criminal with dreams of becoming an actuary…

wanmankylung – Member

Some people have stolen part of a freshly laid plastic football pitch in Edinburgh – from a primary school.

They were going to install anti-theft measures but decided it’d be too hard to fence.

There were rumours back where I used to live that some dodgy types had ram raided the local Woolworths just for the pick n mix. Not entirely sure its true but the thought still amuses me!

When I lived in Glasgow one of my neighbours had their house broken into. Thief stole a boiled ham from the fridge. That was it.

When I lived in London a while back, someone smashed the side window of my car, so they could pull the bonnet release, and stole the left headlight assembly. My flatmate also lost a wing mirror and side door trim. We figured the breakers yard round the corner were stealing spare parts to order…

My Dad once had about 100m of security fencing stolen from a site the day after it was installed to try and stop theft!

Someone stole our council provided wheelie bin a couple of years back.

My dad left his trainers in a changing room once and when he went back to get them somebody had stolen the insoles.

Sister once had all her family’s washing stolen off her line. A couple of days later she found it on her doorstep, all neatly folded.

i lost my heart to a starship trooper….

When I lived in Nottingham, some kids (we think) broke into our house. Took my housemates laptop whose room was on the first floor, then mustve have gone upstairs to my room, ignored my 200 quid headphones and 600 quid (small and easy to carry) cd player and nicked the walkers multipack that was lying on the floor. I guess they must’ve been hungry? It was a big 24 bag one.

When I were a lad, someone stole the (obviously rubbish) combination lock I’d locked my bike with in the school bike sheds, and left the bike.

I once had a half filled rubble skip on the drive – someone decided to dump some knackered old furniture, broken wardrobe in it which I was pretty mad about. Within the hour someone had knicked the wardrobe…

From what I understand, some members of the travelling community stole 400m of internet from the village near me. They stole ot for scrap value, but did not realise that it was fibre.

Took out internet for nearly a week that did.

At an outdoor centre in 1999 – kit store full of climbing gear, paddles etc and a shed full of 50 (new) mountain bikes, tools, helmets the whole nine yards. They made great effort to get in a heavy door attached with steel bars inside. The energy saving light bulbs were pinched. 😕

Galloway’s Otter was also nicked. 😕

In my work we have (had) a fantastic collection of fridge magnets from all corners of the globe – the tackier the better – from when people have been on holiday / conferences etc. & over the last year or so 10-20 of the “best” ones have gone missing… although strangely the one I brought back from Florence of the statue of David’s pecker is still there. (we thought initially the cleaners had accidentally knocked a few off & broke them then destroyed the evidence, but they have done so in the past & left them on a nearby table for the gaffer tape fairy.

😕

I replace the battery in my car as it was leaking, left it out on the road in front of the car overnight , intending to box it up and take to the tip, but when I came out next morning it had gone ! saved me a trip though so quite handy

While I was at uni, someone, on the way back from a particularly good night out, stole a 3ft tall concrete donkey from a house a few doors down from the student house they were living in. Took two people to lug it down the road and up in to the bathroom of the house. The next day, “Lost – Reward” type posters appeared all over the place. The neighbour knocked on the door of the student house to say, “Just in case you see it somewhere around town….” and so on.

Having let the heat die down a little, the donkey was returned under cover of darkness a couple of weeks later.

Someone told me all about it.

I arrived at work on morning to discover that 6 of the external CCTV cameras had been nicked.

We had some excellent close up shots on the recorder of the thief gurning as he undid the bolts holding them to the wall.

[video]https://youtu.be/5YZ_ryQE2IU[/video]

When we first bought our house it had been uninhabited for a while and it stayed that way while we worked on planning permission etc. I left a hosepipe and a hippo bag by the bag door. Someone relieved me of them. Weird.

i competed in a football tournament when i was younger and i left my brand new nike air jordans in the changing room. when returned i saw that someone had stolen the lace toggles off them.

this…

Horse rustling – Wishy style

perchypanther – Member
this…

Horse rustling – Wishy style

Haha – if I had 10k of Columbian marching powder in my house, I would not be hiding it next to a 7 foot stolen horse sculpture 😯

I had a Husquvarna motorbike stolen from a mates garage, they also stole a tray of dog food, bike was found 400yds down the road crashed through a hedge but no dog food. Who ever took it must of hurt themselves quite badly as there was a bit of blood and torn clothing. They hung onto the tray of dog food.

You don’t have to be Sherlock to see that this is an inside job. The bike is taken to hide the fact that the real target was the dog food. Did nobody think to question the dog?

Oh yeah following Sam_U’s post, before moving into my house under similar circumstances I had the house number, which also included the street name removed from the wall next to the front door. It was a while before I noticed – expect it was to weigh in as it was cast.

My children 5 year old was at swimming lessons at a school pool. Only people with access to the changing rooms were parents and other children having lessons. Somebody stole his trousers (they weren’t particularly fashionable)……. 🙁

Someone stole a bag of mature horse poo from the driveway of our house, I kid you not.

Place I worked at before had the security computers stolen from the new building before it was fully up and running.

I know it’s not quite in keeping with the posts so far but I’ve never understood stealing someone’s beloved pet: It’s not as if they are that hard, or costly, to get hold of (unless you are talking about star show dogs, I guess). If it just comes down to making a few quid, surely there are better, more lucrative ways of doing it.

If they are after a companion, it’s a bit like kidnapping someone’s girlfriend to have one for your own.

While I was at uni, someone, on the way back from a particularly good night out, stole a 3ft tall concrete donkey from a house a few doors down from the student house they were living in. Took two people to lug it down the road and up in to the bathroom of the house. The next day, “Lost – Reward” type posters appeared all over the place. The neighbour knocked on the door of the student house to say, “Just in case you see it somewhere around town….” and so on.

Having let the heat die down a little, the donkey was returned under cover of darkness a couple of weeks later.

Someone told me all about it.

Probably the same bloke as the one that stole a 3 foot high steel bollard, replete with City of Durham crest, from one of the Durham city centre streets, carried it back to their hall of residence, used it to batter down a mate’s door, hid it under their bed, and then returned it the next night.

Someone smashed into my van, on my birthday. Both front windows destroyed, damage to doors and window sliders, tore out bulkhead, threw the baby seat in the back. Glass everywhere, leaving us in the cold Peaks with a 1 year old, car seat full of glass and drive home with no windows.

We’d only been gone 5 mins but I had insisted my Mrs took her bag.

They left my iPod, Oakleys, tool kit, stereo, amp and sub.

Stole a road map and a first aid kit. Hope the buggers cut themselves badly.

When I was a kid, someone broke into our house and stole a big box of choc ices. The police followed a trail of choc ice wrappers down a couple of streets, up a close, up to a front door with a chocolatey handprint on it, knocked and the thief answered with a choc ice in his hand.

Easiest case Maryhill’s finest ever solved 😀

Someone broke into the shop next to mine a few years ago – it was a newsagents and they got in through the roof. the thief took one carton of cigarettes, and left behind a very nice leather jacket with his bail papers from Hamilton Sheriff Court in the pocket, giving his name and address.

Years ago, I was ‘tubing’ in the Maekhong, in Laos, enjoying the local greenery, and beer. At the end of a very exhausting day, possibly hallucinating a bit, I had to crawl back to my room at the hostel and get some shut eye before the evening’s entertainment.

I left my Teva jesus sandals at the bottom of the stairs, as was customary, and went to lie down.

A few hours later, I got up, and put on my sandals, but there was something wrong, they weren’t mine. They looked like mine, had the same pattern as mine, but they just weren’t. Initially I put it down to being stoned, but as the night progressed I became convinced that someone had stolen my sandals, and replaced them with these inferior ones.

Next day, returning to tubing, I was floating down river blazing away, when I went past fellow tuber, who was wearing very familiar sandals, at which point, I leaped forth from my tube, grabbed his feet and accused him of stealing my sandals.

Hadn’t really looked at the size or build of the young man, or the fact that his feet were similar size, or indeed he was in fact my neighbour.

The case of the stolen sandals was solved, and I left feeling a bit sheepish, but vindicated at the same time.

Someone stole the two curling stones we had on our gateposts, no joke, the Police found him an hour later absolutely shattered trying to lug them down the lane.

Quirrel, that’s a bit like the Douglas Adams story about digestives:

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of digestives. I went and sat at a table.

I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of digestives. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of digestives, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your digestives.

You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. . . But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, what am I going to do?

In the end I thought, Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a digestive for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another digestive. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice . . .” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight digestives, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my digestives.

The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.