Friday 16 April 2010

True Story that will become an Urban Myth

A chap was driving to an appointment this afternoon. He saw a car parked at the side of one of the sliproads between the motorway and his final destination, the driver of which was standing at the edge of the road trying to thumb down a driver.

Being a helpful sort and in no particular hurry, said chap pulled over to ask what the matter was. The man told him he needed petrol, 'I'm sorry I don't have a spare canister' replied the chap. 'OK, then lend me money' countered the man, 'I'll give you my wedding ring as security', and pulled off his fairly chunky looking wedding ring and waved it in the chap's face.

This all seemed increasingly implausible, because the slip road was miles from the nearest petrol station, so the chap decided it was some sort of scam, told the man that he would just park up properly, waited for the man to step back from the car... and then sped off. The chap observed in his rear view mirror that the man made a half-hearted attempt to run after him, and was still gesticulating wildly, but gave it no further thought.

When the chap arrived at his appointment, he gathered up his bundle of papers from the passenger seat and noticed that the man's wedding ring was lying underneath them. Apparently, the ring bears the hallmarks '14K' and '585', whatever they mean.

8 comments:

bayard said...

Seems unlikely; most petrol stations sell petrol cans, and, I would have thought, all motorway services have a cashpoint.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, that is exactly what the chap surmised. Allegedly.

bayard said...

Mind you, I'd be more likely to believe such a person if he was trying to cross the Severn Bridge. Those bastards ONLY take cash and once you are at the tollbooth, you can't turn round.

J said...

14K is 14 carat. 585 refers to the percentage of gold (I think it's ~58.5%). The rest of the post confuses me.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, indeed (another one of my pet rants).

E, surely it makes more sense than the UM about the little old lady having a bag of dog poo stolen from her?

James Higham said...

Lost me, this one.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, the punchline is, instead of The Chap being scammed out of a few quid or being mugged, he ended up (inadvertently) driving off with the wedding ring of the would-be scammer. Is my English that bad?

bayard said...

"E, surely it makes more sense than the UM about the little old lady having a bag of dog poo stolen from her?"

According to John Simpson, he and his father actually engineered such an event when all the toilets in the house were frozen. The offending articles were wrapped in newspaper and left in a Harrods bag in an unlocked car in Ipswich.