Larceny
A while back, my ancient CRT screen that I was using as a second monitor on my PC made that dreaded whummm noise that signals the departure from the land of the working. This wasn’t that big a deal, because the picture was pretty flaky anyway, and it was extremely old (I’d bought it second hand from work when they were having a clear out of old equipment, so it had had a pretty hard life before it even got to me.)
I pondered the best way to get rid of it. The easiest way seemed to be to just leave it outside and leave it to the entropy of the city to sort out. My conscience eventually go the better of me though, so I phoned up the council to come and pick it up and dispose of it properly. (Well, sort of properly. I would have liked to have recycled it, but that turns out to be amazingly difficult to do if you don’t have a car.)
They gave me a date of over a week later for it to be picked up, which was slightly annoying, since I didn’t really have any good place to store it until then. Eventually the day arrived, and at about 2am I dragged the thing downstairs and left it on the pavement. Inspired by this bit of junk removal, I went back upstairs and gathered up all of the old paper from around the flat to take to the recycling bins.
When I went out again, less than 10 minutes later, the monitor was gone. Thank you, London, and your population of chancers who will happily pick up anything that isn’t nailed down. I was trying to save the streets from the debris of a heavy, vandalised computer screen, but it wasn’t to be. At least I haven’t heard anything on the news about someone being killed by a monitor plunging from the top of a block of flats.