I had forgotten to share with you a slight bit of panic that arose, the night before I left England. Frankie, Kaci and I had a lovely time with Mark, Callie and Maisie until I had to say my "goodbyes," and balled like a baby, oh I hate goodbyes! Anyway, we were picking up Chris from work when I had a text meassage from Alan, saying "Can you phone me immediatley!" Well I wondered what on earth could have happened! Sadly when one of us comes away, something awful tends to happen, so I was pretty worried! I phoned him straight away, and he had just had his wallet stolen, from outside a service station, whilst filling up with petrol to collect me from the airpot the following afternoon. It's a large service station, on the auto via from Seville to Madrid, although just about fifteen minutes from where we live, so luckily we are regulars there.
Apparantly Alan had missed his pocket, and his wallet landed on the forecourt. He realised this about a minute on the road, when he patted the pocket, where his wallet should have been. He of course went straight back. As we are regulars there, they straight away looked at the cctv tape and saw exactly what had happened. A sneaky person, to keep it polite, had seen what Alan had done, and kicked Alan's wallet under his car, to enable him to pick it up when he thought no on was watching. Although this was seen, sadly the number plate could not be.
Of course the real worry was credit cards that were in the wallet.
I do totally understand security must be put into place, but Alan had not enough credit on the phone he had to phone and cancel the cards. We do have a contract phone in case of emergencies, but I had that in England, so the plan was for me to try and cancel the cards. I was able to tell them every password, what colour pants he wore, any other details they may want to know, or even better, could they phone him!!! Would they help, no bloody way! So we had to hope and pray the cards would not be used until I got back to England, and Alan could phone them from the contract phone. Surely there should be some sort of help to be organised in these situations?
Our good friend David took us to the police station the following day, not in Montoro as they seem to be doing work on the building, but to the tiny town of Pedro Abad, in fact where the service station is. There was a tiny office with three police men in, one of which was smoking away in a corner whilst on a pc. The policemen already knew of the incident, I told you Pedro Abad is small, and they just needed a few details from us. They also has seen the cctv tape and did not recognise the "baddy" . They shook our hands when we had finished, and off we went, really not expecting to hear any more about it, but Alan needed to report his driving license missing anyway.
About a week went passed, and we were in our local post office, where we collect our mail. The gentleman that works there told us he had a phone call from the police station in Seville. Some one had picked up Alans abandoned wallet in Seville, and took in to the police station. Would you believe they wanted our address to post it to us, amazing or what. Well I'm not sure that would happen in England. Of course the cash was missing from inside in but everything else was intact. So although a little lighter, all was well in the end!
Actually since publishing this blog entry, Alan said I was a "big fat liar".... no, no not really, as if he would dare, I had however got some facts wrong. Alan did not wait for me to come home the following day but contacted David and drove into Montoro. He kindly allowed him to telephone the credit card companies, so the panic was over slightly earlier than I remembered, sorry about that!
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