A dastardly crime

What is recounted here took place a few years ago, but the memory is still raw!

During the university term I made a regular journey by bus, once a week on a Wednesday, to perform my duties as a part-time librarian at De Montfort University in Leicester (I have since retired from this post). At the time, the session ran from 5.00pm to 10.00pm, after which I left the library to walk to a nearby bus stop for the journey home. I had a choice between bus stops, because there were several possibilities, but I used to walk along the canal towpath for a short stretch, then up some steps to catch the bus in King Richard's Road, so named in honour of Richard III, who passed this way in 1485.

King Richard's journey was on horseback rather than by the 153 bus, and, and far as I know, he didn't wear varifocal glasses that cost more than £300 at Boots, so perhaps the parallels should not be stretched too far, but we both had unpleasant experiences at this spot. He was reputed to have struck his foot against the bridge as he crossed over, and I was the victim of a dastardly crime.

I had to wait about ten minutes for my bus to arrive, and I knew that I only had a minute or two before the bus was due, when I became aware of drunken voices approaching. The best thing with drunks is not to attract their attention by looking at them, so I didn't. However, one of the drunks made himself impossible to ignore.

There were two of them, a boy and a girl, aged about 19. The boy was considerably more drunk than the girl. He pushed himself up against me and asked if I wanted to go with them for a drink. I did not. All I wanted to do was get on the bus and go home. However, he wouldn't take no for an answer.

At first I tried to push him away, but soon realised that this was a bad idea, as any sort of physical contact might have been regarded by him as an excuse to get violent. Instead, I turned to the girl and asked her to take him away. It was when I turned back to the boy that he snatched the glasses off my face and ran off with them towards the canal bridge.

When he refused to come back, the girl said that she would get the glasses back for me, saying that the boy was "well out of order". Off she went, calling after him. However, the bus was now coming along to the bus stop, and I had a choice to make, whether to get on the bus or let it go, in the hope of being able to retrieve my glasses. Had I taken the latter option, I would have had to wait an hour for the next (and last) bus, with the prospect of meeting even more trouble on the streets of Leicester.

So I got on the bus and came home, minus my expensive and very necessary glasses. Fortunately, the glasses in question had only been bought two months previously and I still had my old glasses available. The old specs were not to the same prescription as the new ones, but they were just about OK.

Of course, I reported the incident to the Police, which you have to do anyway if you want to claim a loss like this on your insurance, and I could tell from their reaction that this was a new one on them! They were very good, in that they checked all available CCTV cameras, and kept me up to date with progress. They also offered me the services of a grief/trauma counsellor, should I need one. However, the crime remains unsolved and my post-traumatic stress did not prove to be life-threatening. I did change my behaviour in one respect, though, and that was to use a bus stop that was nowhere near either a pub or the canal!

So there you are - you never know what bizarre event will happen next. I'm not sure if there is any defence against glasses snatchers, or if this sort of crime is widespread, but it is an experience that I hope will not occur again for a very, very long time! (Preferably, never!)