Muggings in London Town, a great start to be sure.

I live in London.

Not the most exotic place, I am aware.

I also live in a flat, also not the most interesting place.

However, I am alive. That's a mighty good start.


To work out whether I'm an interesting person is a hard choice. I live 7 floors up with 6 other people. One is Irish and completely useless, two study psychology and the others I went to college with. Altogether, we're one small, and throughly normal, group. We all eat, drink and sleep, as well as attend lectures and usually learn. We interact in the normal stylings, as well as occasionally chatting with the fabled bearded man of the flat, but generally we are normal.

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One of my flat mates was mugged a week ago.


He was travelling on a train, on his own with a large suitcase he had brought from his girlfriend's place. He was one stop from his final destination. A young, white male, who stands in front of a gang alone on the train, sits opposite and begins talking- however, due to the headphones in his ears, my flatmate does not hear him. He takes them out, and manages to catch the end of a violent sentence relating to how the young man will "cut him", etc. There is a long silence until slowly my flatmate becomes uneasy.

The young gentleman continues staring. and my flatmate has literally no idea what the gentleman has just said. He stabs in the dark:

"You want something?"

Silence.

Slowly the young mans looks back at his group, who are not paying attention in the slightest. His stare becomes weaker, but he attempts to keep focus.

"I could take you out right now!"


Now it's just embarrassingly quiet.


My flatmate, concerned for the £1500 laptop in his suitcase, tries to play along.

"You want...my iPod or something?"

The young man's eyes light up. "Yeah, give it to me!" My flatmate hands his iPod over, the headphones along with the deal. The mugger heads off gleefully towards his gang and hands the goods to them, as they begin fighting between themselves as to who could own such a gift. The fine gentleman comes back:

"Got anything else on you?"

My flatmate slowly looks through his empty, student wallet and shows his cheap, beaten phone to the young man- before he finally utters: "No especially, mate."

The mugger seems entirely happy with this answer, and having gained such a rapport from the victim so far, he leaves.


My flatmate is entirely confused by this encounter, and the loss of a prized possession doesn't even skim the surface of his mind before he hears the barbaric cries of the group as they fight over the object. Some members disagree with the action, cries of "don't be hatin'!" go up as they fall into civil war, all pushing and grasping towards the popular music player. Finally, an elder of the group takes charge.

He grabs the headphones, and returns them to my flatmate as the train nears the station. Completely dazed from the confrontation, he feels pity upon the group and offers them to take it, as it obviously means ten-fold more to them. However, the headphones end up back in my friend's grasp.

Then, meer seconds before the train pulls in at the destination, with my flatmate stationed to leave as fast as possible, the elder walks up to him with iPod in hand and returns it to him. The elder also checks that my flatmate is okay, and that he holds everything on his person that he should have. My friend, completely confused, tells the young man that everything is fine. He then leaves the train. He walks back to our flat and begins the subject: "I've just been mugged".



Muggers of West London- YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.