Saturday 26 December 2020

Reaching New Heights Of Absurdity...

...before 2020 bows out for good (riddance):

An exotic plant that fell out of favour when it was linked to suburban wife-swapping is now so popular that it has become the latest target for garden thieves.
Police are investigating a string of pampas grass thefts across Sussex amid reports that stolen bunches of the white feathery plumes can fetch up to £150 online.
How on earth does one 'investigate' this? 

Oh, silly me, it's not like that phrase means the modern police are actually doing anything except recording a crime number, I suppose...
One homeowner in Horsham, West Sussex, described how thieves armed with secateurs broke down her garden fence one night last month to strip every stem of her massive plant.
So they aren't digging them up (confession time: I love pampas grass, all grasses in fact, and a well mature one has roots you'd need a mini-digger to shift) but cutting the heads off?
The exotic plant features in the designs of several upmarket home decorators. Celebrities such as Dani Dyer and Stacey Solomon have also displayed tasteful arrangements of dyed stems in vases on their social media sites.

Ah. Who could have suspected this was being driven by vacuous 'celebrities'? 

Sahar Kasiri, co-founder and creative director of Elari Events, uses pampas grass in many of her designs, including a 9ft Christmas tree that gained 30,000 likes on Instagram.
She said a single stem of pampas grass can cost £25...

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! 

5 comments:

DiscoveredJoys said...

Many years ago crims would break into office buildings to steal the ram modules out of computers - because memory was expensive and in short supply.

Now pampas grass.

So my jaundiced view is that ending the 'war on drugs' (of which I approve in principle) will merely shift the crims' target to other expensive items in short supply.

Anonymous said...

On a map, mark the location of each theft, and somewhere in that grouping, there will be a caravan site, whether legal or illegal. Ever since even the most dizzy person caught on to the lucky heather scam, and it's too cold for tarmaccing, the caravan utilising nomadic travellers have continued looking for the next plan to put money in their pockets. Mind you, anyone who follows the fashion trends of people like 'hard man' Danny Dyer deserves to be conned into buying stolen property.
Penseivat

Anonymous said...

Well at least it's a crime that the police can investigate on the internet from the warmth and safety of their office. Much preferred to actually going out where those nasty criminals might be.

ivan said...

How many tons of the stuff do they want we have masses of it trying to take over the garden? At least there is a use for it - staking the tomato plants.

Once it gets started in the garden it is almost impossible to get rid of.

JuliaM said...

"So my jaundiced view is that ending the 'war on drugs' (of which I approve in principle) will merely shift the crims' target to other expensive items in short supply."

It's fun to guess what might in future fill this niche. Designer puppies seem to be closing the gap fast.

"...and somewhere in that grouping, there will be a caravan site, whether legal or illegal. "

Aren't they too busy raiding puppy breeders at the moment?

"Well at least it's a crime that the police can investigate on the internet from the warmth and safety of their office."

Heh!

"How many tons of the stuff do they want we have masses of it trying to take over the garden? At least there is a use for it - staking the tomato plants."

Nah, that's what the escaped-from-container bamboo is for!

"Once it gets started in the garden it is almost impossible to get rid of."

Don't try burning it. That's actually recommended as a growth promoter, simulating prairie fires!