Recently an old physiotherapist friend of mine reminded me of a boozy night out many moons ago where I stole a rather expensive oil painting from the party host's living room.
I had all but forgotten the misdemeanour but on reflection I realised that she was indeed right, I had stolen the painting and although pissed as a fart had the presence of mind to pop it in the boot of my car before crashing out .
This dreadful " habit" wasn't a one off....in the 80s and early 1990s I appropriated a whole shopsworth of precious items- most of which I returned to the owners within a 24 hour period
A silver sugar sifter , and set of silver spoons .
A tea caddy
And a terracotta planter complete with small Bay tree , were just a few items I woke up next to, in those heady days of The Leadmill nightclub, nurse parties and lock ins at the Springfield pub.
I stopped drunk stealing in 1998. It was on a warm April Sunday Morning in Sheffield and I had decided to walk from Ecclesall Road back home to Hillsborough at 2 am in the morning.
Big mistake
For when I eventually got up late morning the following day, I was surrounded by vases, pint glasses jam jars and teapots full to the brim with hundreds, literally hundreds of stolen golden daffodils.
What's the worst thing you have done under the influence?
I refuse to answer your question but let me just say that I can relate to those drunken memories. Like you I did some bad things when I was a young man with too much beer in my belly.
ReplyDeleteI bet you were often sick in Encliffe park
DeleteYou have lost your bet good sir. My worst stuff happened in Scotland.
DeleteShame prevents me from revealing the worst! However, on a different occasion my husband was collecting me from a works do, I was well and truly trollied. On the way home he stopped at a red traffic light and I, thinking we were home, opened the car door and started falling out (before the days of seat belts), he had to lean over and drag me back in by the seat of my pants. Apparently. He's told the story to whoever will listen a few times. (He never gets drunk).
ReplyDeleteHow absolutely fabulous
DeleteI have only ever had too much once and then I had to shout for my husband (first husband it is many moons ago) to stop the car and I was sick in the gutter. My husband was fond of telling folk it was right outside the boys' Grammar School.
ReplyDeleteLightweight x
DeleteWas somewhat of a goody-goody at 19 back in 1969. I lived in San Francisco in the YWCA's residence club at the top of the hill on Powell St and worked for a bank at Powell and Market St where the cable cars turned around. The monthly rent included daily breakfast and dinner in the dining room. One night they served Shrimp Creole, a dish I had never had. Later a few fellow residents had a contraband bottle of booze in the TV room, which I shared with them though I was underage at that time. It only took a couple of drinks to make me giddy and then my boyfriend called (there were phone booths and back then people could call in to them) and while talking to him in that tiny closed in booth, I upchucked that damn Shrimp Creole and wobbled back to my room. Next day the janitor complained to everyone about the mess he had to clean up! I was too mortified to confess it was me. To this day I can only eat cold shrimp.
ReplyDeleteShrimp creole? Spicy?
DeleteUnfortunately I only remember it coming up, not going down.
DeleteBwaHaHaHa!
DeleteWell, you may have stolen, but at least you made your house beautiful!
ReplyDeleteGood job I didn't have hay fever
DeleteFortunately, or unfortunatrly, I've never been under the influence. A drunken thief.....hmmm...at least when you came to your 'senses' you returned everything. But...how did you manage to remember where you got all that stuff?
ReplyDeleteI remember the expensive sugar shifter was returned three days later
DeleteI don't wish to say - on the grounds that it may incriminate me. (I'd better check out the Statute of Limitations!) But at least I've NEVER stolen flowers - so there!!!
ReplyDeleteJust men's hearts Raymondo ?
DeleteA friend brought a dancer home from a bar one night and proceeded to party into the night. I came across a couple of the photos recently . . .
ReplyDeleteNow that takes some doing
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWe had just moved house. My Mum and Dad were babysitting our three year old for the whole night, a very rare occurrence. As we had moved opposite to my brother in law and his wife we had an impromptu housewarming party. Many, many ciders may have been consumed ... we accidentally locked the cat out and went to bed!! We were so lucky he was a sensible cat, he made his way round a terrace of houses to our front door, a door he had never seen before and sat howling in the morning to wake us from our drunken stupor.
ReplyDeleteThe shock that we might have lost him brought me immediately to my senses. Clever, clever Sam.
I loved this story x
DeleteI had one incident but I’ll never tell. It wasn’t that bad but when I think about it, I still get embarrassed. It was a lesson learned.
ReplyDeleteGo on
DeleteI don't drink too much when out so nothing bad to share. I have always reserved drinking too much to the home.
ReplyDeleteOh I've just remembered I stole a garden gnome out of a front garden in crookes Sheffield . He sat in my garden for four years
DeleteI admit to being sick in a few flower beds when nobody was looking.
DeleteDrove the wrong way on a road, and only because of a compassionate man out at 2:30 a.m. did I get a ride home safely. Haven't drank since (Auguat 20, 1985).
ReplyDeleteWe have some virtuous post drinking characters here
DeleteAfter a pretty good night out with friends in Worthing where I went to art college, I decided that I needed to have a deckchair in my bedroom so nicked one from the seafront. It was a striped Director's chair style and I loved it. My mother never asked why it had West Sussex County a council stamped on the back !
ReplyDeleteLove it
DeleteHow lovely to wake up to a host of golden daffodils! Was you wandering lonely as a cloud when you committed your misdemeanor? The worst thing I have done under the influence was to dance on the table at a German beer festival in Blackpool!
ReplyDeleteI've done the same in the Liverpool beerkella
DeleteKleptomania in the grip of drink. That's effing brilliant. There isn't a judge in the land who'd not let you off, the jury pissing themselves (and buy you a drink).
ReplyDeleteYou do realize, don't you, that few of your readers will answer your question, as amusing as your question is, truthfully. My own meagre contribution (meagre in as much as it doesn't compromise me personally) when, a few years ago, walking through the park and the sun was shining, I was stopped by some students doing their studenty thingy (filming, interviewing and stuff. They asked me what I thought about the guy who had pissed (drunk) under cover of the night, say three in the morning, against/over the city's war memorial, located in one of same city's many parks. People being prissy it had caused an uproar among the tut tutting classes, an outrage the local press was only too happy to report on in detail.
What did I think? Well, I said, I don't think anything. The dead won't have minded. Fact is that when a guy needs to pee a guy needs to pee - and for some reason guys need something to pee at or against; ideally a tree, but in this case the war memorial was the closest to piss on. Who is to argue with nature's musts?
Well I think we've had a few honest ones here xx
DeleteBack in the 70s when I was in my 20s my boyfriend (now husband) and I went to the annual nurses Christmas party. On the way home I knew I was going to throw up. We couldn't stop, as we were in traffic so I opened the window and put my head out and did the inevitable. The next day, (this is December in W. Canada and very cold) DH had to go out with the ice scraper and scrap all the frozen vomit off the side of the car. He was not impressed, and I was a little embarrassed, to say the least!!
ReplyDeleteWhat is it with nurses vomiting? I've passed gallons in my time
DeleteI used to pick flowers on the way to kindergarten. Front yard flowers. A mean old crone confiscated my handfull of pinks and told me I was going to hell, after she told my parents and the the teacher. Thereafter, I left flowers alone.
ReplyDeleteI was 34!!
DeleteUsually when I was young and was consuming too much beer, I never got into trouble because the beer generally said, "I don't like it in here, let's take the closest exits fast as we can"!
ReplyDeleteThere are a few fudging answers here me thinks
DeleteThis doesn't sound good for me but many times as a young lady (HA), a friend and I were found asleep on sidewalks, one time right across the street from where she lived. A very nice police officer carried us across to the flat and asked us not to go out again.......... it happened more times than I like to think........ those were the good old days. Now it is 2 glasses of wine, sharing happy hour with the neighbours.
ReplyDeleteLight weight x
DeleteThe worst thing? Report you for historical theft offences. Expect a knock on the door in the early hours.
ReplyDeleteTom, does that mean you are under the influence now? I usually end up watching videos of sad songs and crying.
DeleteI have only one stollen item in the cottage
Delete"Drunk stealing" is by far the funniest thing I've ever heard. I'm going to have to google it to see if it's a thing or solely yours.
ReplyDeleteLet me know......I do like my reverse stealing thing of secretly filling people's supermarket baskets with unwanted items
DeleteThis makes me giggle
DeletePutting things into someone else’s basket just cracks me up
My friend and I stopped to watch the cops round up people from a street fight. The paddy wagon door was open ..... I had never been in a police wagon before .... so I climbed in. Thankfully, the police man who next came along was someone I knew and he said "Get out of the car, Sandy". I complied.
ReplyDeleteYou mad cow sandy x
DeleteI did the opposite of stealing: I was loaded on vodka (I had just started drinking vodka and did not know my limit) in my own home when a friend admired a large work of art I had made (it was a Noah's ark that took me 147 hours of to do). Swaying gently, I grandly told her that she could have it.
ReplyDeleteThe next morning, she said to me, "Last night you said I could have this art work. Did you mean it?"
I, being stupid, remembered something I had read from Hemingway: "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk" so, feeling honor-bound, I said, "Sure! Take it!"
I instantly knew it was the wrong thing to do, and I have regretted giving away this work of art for over 22 years.
And the second half of that quote, which I did not know at the time, is "That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." I wish I'd known that in 1996.
I love your daffodil-stealing story. You lead a very poetic life.
My mother ga ve me a silver teapot when she was pissed. To teach her a lesson I took it home
DeleteDangerous and stupid: I passengered while drunk on the back of a motorcycle down Highway 1 here in Calif. & blacked out through most of it. :(
ReplyDeleteBea I have been on Hwy 1 many times and I am glad I was sober. You have to be an amazing good driver or you really do have an angel watching over you!!
DeleteOr passenger !
DeleteEasy Riders!,
DeleteI admit I was friends with a Hell’s Angel
DeleteI
Loo paper from the town pubs...our halls of residence only had that old Izal tracing paper stuff and this was a big step up. They must have cursed us students!
ReplyDeleteArilx
You mad bitch x
DeleteMead, my drink of choice then, or more to the point, for one fateful night only. It was in the days before the drink and drive laws. We went out the four of us to a country pub, l took a fancy to mead, a potent brew if ever there was one! Sitting in the back of the car coming home I took it upon myself to remove my drawers and place them on the drivers head... seemed like a good idea at the time? He drove us home wearing not a chauffeur’s hat but a pair of lacy knicks.
ReplyDeleteLX
I am sitting outside on the lanai and when I read this I laughed out loud
DeleteThe neighbors will be convinced that I have lost my mind
Drunk stealing, only time, was milk off a neighbour's doorstep when at a friend's party and we'd stayed up all night. Worst and most stupid episode when drunk was when about 20 years old dancing on a flat roof with a couple of other pie-eyed girls at a party (we found a ladder and clambered up, it was about 10' off the ground) but thankfully some kind male mates helped us down. We were 'dancing' to Bananarama by the way.
ReplyDeleteI love bananaroma ! " I'm your penis"
DeleteWhat a story! Love the yellowness of the photo for this post, btw. I've been such a good girl...but when properly lubricated I have been known to do a double back flip. It is not at all what you might think though. It basically involves telling everyone you plan to do it and getting them properly scared that you will hurt yourself, then turning your back, count to 3 an act like you are actually going to do something, but on the count of 3 you flip everyone the bird with both hands...er, fingers.
ReplyDeleteI can't even do a forwardroll
DeleteConveniently, having been under the influence at the time, I can't remember. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. And, by the way, I'm still awaiting the return of my grand piano... and the candelabra.
ReplyDeleteThat piano nearly killed me
DeleteAha, I suspected you were as devious and jaded under that prim and proper venier as the rest of us....Well done. Great picture of the matching flowers and vases.
ReplyDeleteI've never been prim
DeleteMy arse is too big
Tis all in the perspective John
DeleteNot so much drunk stealing but many years ago I went to a beach party on Black rock sands with a local doctors son ( the local heartthrob ) they had bottled of Bacardi & coke which was the “in” drink, trying to impress him I had a few, and then sitting in his pride and Joy a black VW beetle I leaned out of the window and threw up....the next day he phoned and said the vomit had stripped the paintwork down to the bare metal, he had to have it completed resprayed..reverse stealing ?? I put condoms and KY jelly in old ladies shopping trolleys and then watch at the check outs ..great fun
ReplyDeleteI have seen you in the supermarket! Watch your trolley my friend x
DeleteOh you make my supermarket seem so very dull:(
DeleteAlthough I was invited to dinner by a questionable man:(
DeleteDrunk and stoned, I was driving about 65 MPH. I fell asleep, and woke as I was going up an embankment. I circled my car back down to the freeway, and I exited now frighteningly wide awake.
ReplyDeleteMy friend Frankie used to party like you.
Now I will go read all those other adventures.
Mate you devil
DeleteUnlike when I am sober when I drank as a young man I became VERY assertive verbally....read LOUD!
ReplyDeleteI never stole anything in my life (I was way too nervous to pull that off) but I was told that my performance at a fancy restaurant after one of the many formal ball dances my gang used to attend was very rude. When the waitress asked what I wanted from the menu I said in a very audible voice for the whole restaurant to hear.....'I would like a hot pork bum please!" Need I say more...
I loved that...it reminded me of when I lived in york and went to the famous Betty's tea rooms
DeleteThere was a bun called a FAT RASCAL .
I asked for a FAT BASTARD
Nurses home in Edinburgh had ahuge seminar room attached. It had half tiny windows and some huge. We got back at 2 am all tiny curtains went on big windows and big on tiny windows took us ages with ladders. Filled vases on the tables with dandelions and doken leaves. Was a huge consultants seminar in the morning!. We denied everything!. Some consultants thought hilarious some not so!.
ReplyDeleteNutter x
DeleteI remember in my mid teens getting drunk and running around our village stealing VW badges off cars for my then boyfriends little brother and his mates so they could look like the beastie boys......
ReplyDeleteRecently I've woken up to my sons drunk thefts in my hallway ....a traffic sign, a 'fairy mirror ' and a local road sign...... All on seperate occasions, not just one nights spree!!!
At least it wasn't just me
DeleteKilled a water buffalo, the kind farmers use in SE Asia, with a machine gun.
ReplyDeleteAnd the prize goes to dear mike x
DeleteI had too much rum one night and passed out during my boyfriend’s birthday party. I found out later that they were carrying me around the party. Luckily all of the people at the party were good friends. That could have been a dangerous situation for a young girl. I was only 18. The kicker of the story is that my boyfriend and two others took me back home to my waiting and very angry parents. Then, my drunk boyfriend backed off of the driveway and tore up the side yard. I laugh about it now, but it was a stupid thing to do.
ReplyDeleteIn the 80s my friend and I had a thing for purloining garden gnomes on the weekend stagger home from the pub. We scored points for how many we could grab from front gardens - admittedly not many. On one occasion I managed five gnomes and arrayed them on the lawn in interesting poses facing my friend's parents front door. The following morning his mum discovered them and fell about laughing. I feel a bit mean about it now as they were someone's happy possessions ( although still perplexed by garden gnomes). I think it featured ( gnome theft) in a local paper, so we stopped doing it. Both my friend and I later became nurses. I must remind my respectable friend of our gnome kidknapping exploits when I next see him...
ReplyDeleteBloody great! I did the same
DeleteJohn, I wasn’t under the influence but off my meds. I was hypo manic. I wasn’t sleeping. We had just bought a brand new home with everything turn key. The ex even then was sleeping in his wing of the house. I was sexually charged and not getting any. That’s about the time the internet began to get lively in yahoo chats. I began to drive around at 3 o’clock in the morning and dig up bushes from other ritzy neighborhood nearby . I took a cement bird bath too. I’d rush home while everyone on a cul de sac in the township of Wardsville where we lived and began digging and planting all I pulled up bare handed. How did I get the strength? Mania is scary and dangerous. I have so many stories. A few would get me arrested. Gabs
ReplyDelete*The pharmacist ( ex ) wasn’t sleeping with me. Damn it.
DeleteWorst thing I have done? Told the truth.
ReplyDeleteNo booze, but a demitasse spoon from the Paris Ritz jumped into my purse one time.
ReplyDeleteI bit an unknown person in the middle of the town one Saturday night, he had been belittling women and had to be put in his place.
ReplyDeleteA mate of mine long ago stole a whole row of newly planted shrubs.
ReplyDeleteOne of my friend's has a hubby who pees in her antique butter churn every single time
I love your photo, yellow vases and daffs! Did you steal the flowers from the empty field by your cottage?
ReplyDeleteAs for your question of the day, I don't drink much and never have stolen anything; must admit I am somewhat shocked that you all would take items of value like silver and shrubbery and garden decor, how sad.
lizzy
Flooded a Greek restaurant in Chester; but don't ask me to explain!
ReplyDeleteOh John such a funny one I heard years ago on the radio during a longish journey. Two lads swapped the large wooden gates from two properties in their village resulting in one gate now too short and one too long to shut properly. Posts were moved and gates were shut..... then the boys swapped them back.....
ReplyDeleteHad a wee in the fountain roundabout Chester. Strangely I feel no remorse about it now John Gray !! xx
ReplyDeleteI've been drunk very rarely in my life. The worst thing I do when I'm drunk is talk complete shite to anyone who's prepared to listen.
ReplyDeleteYou have the best posts . . .
ReplyDeleteWhat a hoot this was . . .
I had a fetish for toilet paper in decorative wrappings and “story told” I collected different rolls, for home, after one, two glasses “too many!”
I may have put soap in a fountain. It was spectacular.
ReplyDelete