Gilt trip
Back when I lived in Bristol, I had a brilliant apartment which I shared with a friend, that overlooked the floating harbour. The real selling point of this place was the HUGE patio with a view of the Bristol skyline and enough room to comfortably house 20 or some people for some outdoor bbq party action. My housemate was a keen gardener, and wanted to buy a huge planter to put some of the more impressive shrubs and such in that he'd grown over the years. But these things cost a fortune, a couple of hundred quid, easily. So he hatched a plan...

We lived down the road from a plumbers yard (Bristol residents may now be getting an idea of where the flat was). This yard usually had old bathroom suites outside which were waiting to be scrapped. One night, while a bit pissed, my housemate liberated a bath from the yard and dragged it back to the flat, took it onto the patio and sprayed it bronze with some Hammerite paint. Chuck in some soil and some rocks for drainage and bingo, we have ourselves a planter, and a real talking point to boot...

Three years on and we're ready to move. We've cleared the house, cleaned it and... oh, hang on, there's a bath full of soil and plants outside...

18 bin bags of dirt and rocks later and we've emptied the fucker. The plants have been repotted and the bath is spent. So we load it in a van to take it to the tip.

Except the tip won't take it. The van is too tall and we can't unload outside and carry it in for "health and safety" (ie jobsworth) reasons.

So we hatched another plan. Under cover of darkness, we picked the bath up and carried it back to the yard where it had be stolen from. We casually dumped it outside the front door and scarpered. Next morning we walked past to see a very confused looking plumbers merchant wondering how a bronze spray painted bath had materialised during the previous 24 hours.

So no, I've never stolen anything. But I have returned stolen goods to their original homes after a "changing rooms" style makeover... I like to think of it as a public service

And if you've made it this far, apologies for taking five minutes of your life that you'll never get back...
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 11 Jan 2008, 19:15, 2 replies)

:D
I enjoyed the tale - especially the 'gilt trip' pun :D
(Ovaltina, Sat 12 Jan 2008, 1:57, closed)

that's ok
I'm quite happy with those 5 mins just as I had them
(misskitty reeks of sex and turpentine; laudanum afternoons, Sat 12 Jan 2008, 3:00, closed)