Random Acts of Senseless Senselessness

Life in South London has its fair share of these. There was the crude hoax letter claiming that I had an overdue video, the 9am visit from a friendly new neighbour which left me thinking that he was the driver of the Social Services bus come to pick up the woman from next door, and him thinking (I think) that I was a KKK member refusing to open the door to a black man (I was naked, half-asleep and couldn't find my keys), the sudden appearance of a single spray of gold paint on our porch which left me half paranoid that it was some kind of gang thing, and the pair of trainers strung up by their laces over the telephone wires across the street - that really was a gang thing according to a mate who'd just got back from LA - alerting potential customers to the crack house over the road (now neatly sealed by the council). And there's a constant stream of people knocking on my door asking if I want to buy a three piece suite. Just how likely is it that I'd say yes, and if so, that I'd fancy the one in the back of their van - however reasonably priced?

But by far the weirdest event happened on Sunday morning, when I opened the front door to find half a pair of fairly sturdy handcuffs swinging on it, giving the impression that they'd been levered off using the (very sturdy) door knocker. Should we have rung the police and asked them if they'd mislaid a handcuffed felon? or should we have done what we in fact did, and assumed that a stag night had got lost.