I am new to the school run as Big Sister only started school
a few days ago. We do the school run with the bicycle trailer, and leave it
locked to a sign post overnight. Imagine our surprise one hurried morning when
I hassled a two year old and a four year old up the towpath and onto the lane
to find: no bike, no trailer. I double-check my memory; yes we did lock it up
here yesterday after school. I can’t
believe it’s been stolen! Especially from a country lane in the middle of
nowhere. We’re away from our home mooring at the moment and moored in a
beautifully rural isolated spot, overhanging with trees. There’s only one other
boater moored here, some distance down the towpath from us. As luck would have
it that boater arrived home at that moment and offered us a lift to school in
his car. His dogs were in the boot and the girls giggled all the way as the
dogs licked their fingers.
Later at Tring police station the constable takes my details
and finds it hard to imagine the kind of trailer I am describing. We do get
people stopping, staring and pointing as I cycle to school and nursery with my
two princesses in their red canvas carriage behind. The policeman says that he
will put a sign up in the police station and get a feature in the local paper.
“Really?” I said incredulously. “I used to live in London.
You’d say, I’ve had a bike stolen,
and the police would say, Oh yeah.”
Meaning, “whatever”.
He laughs.
“But this is Tring!”
For the next few days we make long journeys to school by
foot,(me) by pushchair (little one) and by scooter (big girl). The school
teacher, nursery staff and the other mums are shocked at the theft we have
suffered. Soon enough the crime reference number is generated and five or six
days after the theft I am planning to claim on the boat contents insurance.
That morning I’m busily hurrying the girls ready for school and nursery. The
Doctor has just left the boat, heading to work when he phones me.
“The bike trailer is back!”
“What?”
“The bike and the trailer, they’re back where we left them!”
The lock of course is gone, and the bike seat has been
lowered to accommodate the size of someone much smaller than me but other than
that it’s our same old familiar and super-useful trailer. Did some
thieving kid’s parents insist that they
take that right back to wherever they got it? Did someone have a pang of guilt
that they’d stolen from a young family? Or is there just not much call for a
bike with one broken brake and a tatty child trailer on the black market in
Tring? Tring is a charming Hertfordshire market town, and even the thieves are
good at heart it seems.