Jon and Bobby were darting in and out of the shops, pinching here and there, then mostly just throwing the stuff away, to make room in their pockets for the next lot of booty. Bobby was after a boxed troll in TJ Hughes, until a security guard told them to leave. Jon robbed a couple of felt-tipped pens, and left them lying on a display cooker.
They investigated the computer games and equipment in Tandy, Rumbelows, Dixons and Woolworths. The assistant in Tandy showed Jon some cheats for the Segas and told him how to put songs on the Commodores. They left Tandy with a four-pack of Evergreen AA-sized 1.5v batteries.
It was no fun in Woolworths, because you couldn’t play with the computers. Jon and Bobby looked at the Thunderbird toys, but Bobby was unimpressed. They were stringy things, he said, and not worth the trouble of thieving.
Across Stanley Road from the Strand, next, to mess around in MacDonalds and the Bradford and Bingley Building Society next door. The Society’s branch manager asked them what they were doing. Bobby said they were waiting for their mum. When they began clambering over the chairs, the branch manager suggested they go and wait in MacDonalds. Bobby said they’d already been thrown out of there, but Jon said, ‘Come on, let’s go,’ so they left the branch manager in peace and ran down to the Kwikkie to rob some Chocolate Dips and Iced Gems. Back on Stanley Road they again bumped into the branch manager, who was on his way to lunch, and Bobby asked him for 20p. The branch manager said no, and carried on walking.
They went back into the Strand through Lunn Poly, pausing to pretend they were big holiday spenders, until Jon pinched a pen off the counter and knocked over a stapler, provoking an assistant to order them out.
Another pen went missing from Rathbones the bakers, just opposite Clinton Cards. The boys were back in the card shop, the assistant watching them carefully this time as they loitered by the trolls, when a middle-aged woman came in.
‘Come on, where’s the pen you took off the lady in Rathbones?’
Bobby tapped his pockets. ‘What pen, I haven’t got a pen.’
The woman said she’d get the police, so Bobby plucked the pen from his pocket and handed it over. The woman told the assistant to watch those two, and the assistant told Jon and Bobby to leave.
Round by the main square they started playing with the fire hydrant door on the pillar, opening and closing it as they shouted and laughed. A four-year-old boy approached and asked what they were doing, but was called away by his elder brother.
Jon said his mouth was dead upset, it was saying it was dying for a drink, so they went into Tesco, where Jon had to empty out his coat to make room for some cartons of yogurt, milk-shake and Ambrosia rice. Bobby got some too. Outside, they sat and ate on some scaffolding.
There was a stall in the main square of the Strand, set up as part of a mental health campaign to promote awareness of the effects of tranquillisers and sleeping pills. The stall carried a display of books, leaflets and audio cassettes. It attracted the attention of Jon and Bobby, who picked up a book called Back To Life, about the ways to withdraw from tranquillisers.
The stall was being run by a mother and daughter, who were talking to an elderly woman shopper. When they saw Jon and Bobby, the mother told them to put the book down, that it would be of no interest to them. The boys made a pretend grab at some of the other literature, and the elderly woman told them to get away and stop being so cheeky. You should be in school, she said. Jon and Bobby teased the woman, tapping her on the back and running away as she turned; tap and run, tap and run. When the woman finally struck out, swinging her bag and shouting, they ran off, calling out some abuse which was lost to the woman’s partial deafness.
Bobby wanted to show Jon the talking troll in Toymaster, but when they got to the shop entrance, they were turned away by an assistant who said they couldn’t come in without their parents. The boys waited, and ran in while she was serving, running out again with some tins of Humbrol enamel paint, Azure Blue and Antique Bronze.
They began playing football with a tin on the walkway. The tin cracked against the glass shopfronts, and skidded around the feet of the shoppers. The boys retrieved it when it began to spill paint. The other, the Antique Bronze, rolled into the corner by Tym’s the butchers, where it was found by a man who had cycled to the Strand on his bike. He took the paint home, to repair the chip on his Toby jug.