(1003)(1052)
15. By whom? By which demographic?
14. Who doxxed the holdout juror?
13. The state of Ceuta just now
12. Gratitude
11. Lord Toby’s site
“Every time I am invited to China my heart lifts. Within 24 hours of arriving, I have usually hit rock-bottom. By the time my visit is over, I am only too glad to be boarding the plane for Hong Kong and on to the UK. If you want a ‘full fat’ experience of China, try visiting as a keynote speaker at a conference. On arrival at the airport there will, inevitably, be a male driver bearing a card with ‘MacNab’ written on it. He will, almost invariably, be accompanied by a female Master’s student.
On my recent arrival in Beijing this was exactly the pattern. A young lady approached me with an enormous bunch of flowers and thrust these at me, simultaneously relieving me of my wheeled case with small rucksack attached to the handle. I hate to let my belongings out of my sight for a moment. The rucksack contained my wallet, phone and passport.”
12. I was with a Police colleague who arrested a driver after a collision for a positive breath test. He called up another unit and took him to the Police station, while I waited for the recovery vehicle to take the crashed card to a pound. As I did so, noticed a wallet on the front passenger seat, which contained the arrested driver’s details. Knowing that the car would be left in an insecure car pound yard, radio”d control and told them what I’d found. checked the contents of the wallet, entering details in my pocket book. Put the wallet in a property bag and handed it in at the Police station. After being charged, the driver was given his wallet back and thanked me by claiming there should be £100 more in it than there was. The interview without coffee with Complaints and Discipline lasted an hour, and I was turned down for promotion because of the suspicion. His £300 fine and 2 year driving ban did little to cheer me up.
This should probably go in “Reader’s Lives” section across over there.
12 – I was driving back from a contract and stopped in Worcester. Never been there before. Found a car park and went for lunch. Walking back to my car I found a wallet on the ground, containing cards, cash, driving licence and business cards, which matched the name on the licence. I called and left messages. No response. Went for a shop, then a coffee. No response, so decided to continue home and post it. As I left the car park, an anxious looking chap was crossing the road – and I recognised him (licence picture). I called his name and asked if he had mislaid anything, handing back the missing wallet. Later that evening and into the next day, he texted and left voice messages, and I later spoke to him again. His faith in humanity had been restored, he said.
Sorry you got the knobhead, Pensievat.
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JH: It will, Justin … as a screenshot twofer as they’re related … you and Penseivat. (Penny? Only Toodles could get away with that.)
https://unherdablecats.wordpress.com/2026/09/13/if-you-found-a-wallet/
Off topic, will accept Toods shortening to Penny, but prefer Pen, which is what my colleagues call me.
Three years or so back I was in a bandm and saw a twenty on the deck. I picked up thanked my luck then instantly thought “hang on someone still in here must have just dropped this” so went looking for anyone anxiously searching.
Sure enough a burly leather clad motorbike rider hove into view. I said “is this what you are looking for?”
A massive grin and sigh of relief accompanied his “Yes!”
It mirrored a similar event probably ten or more years back where I found a twenty in the local Co-op and I did the same thing. That grateful bloke was quite a bit older and insisted he should buy me a pint in the pub the next street over as a thankyou. I dclined pointing out that a pint out of that twenty would set him back £3.50 and it would be better spent on the food he had on the counter.
Never found a wallet but did lose mine back in the eighies which was anonymously handed into the cop shop and I recovered it a week later, intact, by informing the desk bobbie how much was in it.
Apologies for the length of this but its amazing what tales get recalled.
As an apptrentice back in the days when pay packets containing notes and coins were real, the seventies, I picked mine up from the payroll window at dinner. Left the workshop at the sound of the shift hooter and went up an open steel stair the the workshop store above mine.
It was there I realised I had lost my unopened pay packet on that short climb. I immediately got back to the landing and scoured stair and ground for the missing packet. Gone.
On returning to my trsdesman I told him what had happened so we both did a serch found nothing, he asked around the people in the adjacent workshops and the guards on the gate, nothing.
Nothing more could be done so we went onboard the ship we were working on. On our return to the workshop two cleaning ladies came over too me and told me they had had a collection for me and from these lades, the men, the apprentices, the chargehands, foremen, head foreman, storemen, clerk, in that workshop a very embarrassed and yet very happy me went home with a bigger paypacket than I had picked up and lost. Which I didn’t realise until I got home.
The only people I could thank were those two cleaning ladies. Everyone else who gave what tbey did were anonymous. The next day nobody mentioned it or took the piss.
A bit of sadness now if I may be indulged.
The journeyman, the cleaning ladies most of the men in that workshop have gone. The ship we were working on has gone, the workshops have gone, the company has gone. But I can still recall and that is good enough.
Thank you .
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JH: This is also copying across to UHC-WP today later … readers’ lives.
https://unherdablecats.wordpress.com/2026/09/13/finding-some-cash/