A certain part of London is either experiencing uncharacteristically high mobile penetration, or muggings are on the rise.
"We've been stopping a lot of people who have a lot of phones, recently," commented one of Her Majesty's finest, on Saturday morning.
The amount of suspicion in his tone suggested that the good people of southwest London probably aren't yet affluent enough to arbitrarily acquire multiple handsets, and instead more folks are using less-than-honest means to get their sticky fingers on the latest smartphones.
The policeman was stood outside a community centre encouraging local residents to have their handsets security tagged with their postcode and house number. It makes the phone traceable if it is handed in or recovered by police, he said.
With the number of mobile players these days offering phone insurance and online back-up services, daubing on a phone with an ultra-violet pen seems a little antiquated.
Nevertheless in the spirit of gonzo journalism I lined up to have my phone tagged, whereupon I suddenly remembered I'm moving house, which means my postcode and house number will soon change. So instead I chose my parents' details, which although being a fixed address, is nowhere near southwest London.
Cue a minor interrogation about why I would pick a seemingly-random part of the world for a security tag on a new smartphone, during which I realised that if I do happen lose my phone, it will take an unprecedented level of cooperation between police forces in different parts of the country - and my parents - to ever see it again.
Never mind.
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