England 2009 - Sunday

On Sunday morning we went shopping to the center of Liverpool by ourselves. We went around shops, bought a few things, and finally had a good lunch in one restaurant that we finished by an ice cream bowl handmade in the Ice Cream Factory. We wanted to go to a museum afterwards, but because we had our hands full of bags with purchased things we decided to put them in the car first and then go to the museum.  Well, imagine our surprise when we got to the street where our car parked. The car had the doors open and two thieves inside. We started after them, but they had bikes and managed to get away. Unfortunately they stole our navigation, which was very unpleasant. On the other hand we went through encounter with English police that was exactly the same as ours. Although, maybe it was slightly better.

Lenka present mindedly called them during the chase, but we had to wait for them for about an hour. They arrived, looked at the broken window and asked me, whether I could follow them to the station. I told them I could and we started together. They did not worry about red lights and regulations too much, and I did not want to loose them, so I went through Liverpool in left-sided England faster than through any other continental city.

A policeman at the station filled a very long questionnaire with us. It was hard, since his English was not so good. He spoke a local dialect called liverpudlian. It is similar to Maasai dialect, only it is harder to understand.  He had to repeat every question at least twice, which delayed things. However, revenge was sweet. During our description of how the thieves looked, what they had on, how old they were and similar data, we also had this exchange of information:

David: By the way, it might be interesting for you; the thieves spoke very nice, understandable English.

Policeman: Better than mine?

David + Lenka together: YES!

We wanted them to take fingerprints out of the car, since the thieves did not have gloves. Unfortunately, technicians did not work on Sunday, so we were told that somebody will stop by on Monday afternoon at our place.

When we filled and read the protocol (in the policeman handwriting either in shorthand or runes) they copied a map for us and marked the way to get back to Crosby. Well, I knew how to get to Crosby; the problem was the infamous last mile. Our departure was slightly complicated, since Lenka, for whom the adventure was a little too much, became sure that we would never get back to Kathleen, since we would either have an accident on the wrong side of the road or we would get to the Bermuda triangle. It was a hard work to persuade her that it would not make sense to sleep in the car and wait to be rescued by the Red Cross. Luckily she allowed herself to be persuaded after half an hour and we could start. The last mile had to be, of course, tried twice, but at the end, almost in dark, we arrived.

As you might have noticed, we did not get to the museum that day.