Christmas: a time for giving, takingand hot knickers
Hard as it is to believe, there was a time when I was not a farmer! For four years, I pounded the night-time beat in various premises around Cork city and county.
Christmas was a particularly busy time for us in the security game, and usually I would find myself posted in some clothing store in the city centre.
Back then, as I’m sure is still the case today, there was a noticeable rise in the number of shoplifters in the days leading up to Christmas.
Christmas, while it might well be a time for giving, is most definitely a time for serious taking.
Christmas can conjure up a whole range of delightful thoughts for many people, but it usually conjures up the image of knickers for me, from my years of fighting crime in the clothing stores of Patrick’s Street.
Knickers for me are as Christmassy as Bing Crosby’s mellow tones can be for others. For some reason, knickers and bras were very popular items on the Christmas shoplifter’s list. Possibly because of the ease with which they could be stuffed inside a tracksuit top.
Regularly, while standing by the doors, we would get a tip-off over the radio from an undercover colleague somewhere within the store, that a thief was making tracks to the door. And once we spotted the culprit with the bulge, we pounced.
While happy Christmas shoppers carried on as normal all around us, oblivious to crime, security guards like me could well be wrestling with some shoplifter caught red-handed with hot knickers.
Sadly, we got little back then by way of training in the art of restraining villains; we had to learn as we went along. Luckily for me, brought up on a farm, I had an array of moves at my disposal. A youth spent tackling animals for de-horning, castrating and hoof paring served me well.
They were indeed interesting festive times, when farming wasn’t part of my life, but when my farming tackles came in very handy.
