By hook or by crook

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This was published 13 years ago

By hook or by crook

Easy, breezy ... but keep your wits about you in Vancouver.

Easy, breezy ... but keep your wits about you in Vancouver.Credit: AFP

Katrina Lobley thought she'd seen it all until a man with a brolly almost ruined her holiday.

He was the least likely looking thief you could imagine. The guy who plonked himself down on the end of the banquette running the length of the Vancouver diner was balding, middle-aged and unremarkably dressed. He could have been a bank clerk, if you'd pressed me to guess.

Just 24 hours after landing in Canada from Sydney, we were grabbing brekkie before dashing back to the airport to fly to Whitehorse. The plan was for the two of us to rent a campervan and drive around the Yukon wilderness under the midnight sun.

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Canada's a country in which I feel right at home - so at home, in fact, I hadn't even thought to follow the most basic rules of travelling. Quite stupidly, all my valuables - cash, credit cards, ATM card, passport, driver's licence - were in one place, right there in my handbag next to me on the banquette. Had I even thought to bring photocopies of my paperwork? God no. Easy-breezy, good-looking Vancouver was the last place on earth I expected to tangle with a bag-snatcher.

I've had my bag snatched once before, by force, while strolling Havana's ocean-front boardwalk. But here, in this Vancouver diner with barely any patrons, I was about to have my bag nicked by stealth.

The Creep (as I now think of the guy) sat more than an arm's length away and studied the menu when he wasn't gazing off into the distance, seemingly uninterested in his fellow diners. At no point was my guard up, even though I caught an unusual movement in my peripheral vision. On the bench between us, the hooked handle of his long umbrella was moving. As I snapped around to check what it was, he casually shifted in his seat. And I thought, just as he wanted me to, "Oh, he's half-sitting on his umbrella - that's why it moved."

Of course, that wasn't why it was on the move. The Creep was working that brolly, using his arm furthest from sight. It all made shocking sense when I glanced down minutes later only to discover my bag gone. I looked at the guy - the only possible cause of its disappearance - and saw the bag's silver clasp peeping from behind his back.

As I grabbed it and checked inside, I realised he'd pinched my wallet - containing every piece of plastic required for the holiday to pan out as planned. My companion was out of his seat in a flash and retrieved the wallet from under the guy's leg. Throughout the commotion, the guy was cool as a cucumber, insisting my bag must have fallen towards him and my wallet must have simply tumbled out.

With a flight to catch, we didn't call the cops. He maintained his innocence, even as the waitress hustled him out and brought us apple pancakes to make us feel better. He didn't end up with my valuables but that guy taught me a valuable lesson: put all your eggs in one basket and they can end up all over your face.

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