Aukje de Vries' Diary Day 5

Yesterday, after I had closed my diary I went out for my daily exercise, not expecting anything special to happen in the rest of the day. Surprise. Close to my home in the middle of the street I saw a purse. I picked it up. A beautiful black leather purse. Contents: a € 10 note, some change, a seniors’ public transport card plus two bank cards. I decided to go home again and see what the best course of action would be. On the bank cards I found a name. It was the name of a woman and gave both her husband’s and her maiden name.

I looked up the name in the phone directory. Six entries with her husband’s name, two of them not too far from where I live. I decided to give them a ring. Both of them had an answering machine, so I left a message, saying that I had found something, without further specifications. I did not want to try and contact the other people mentioned in the phone directory, but instead called the police. I had the number of our local police station, but this number was no longer in use. I had to call a central number. Police in the neighbourhood? Not here.

I called the central number, gave the details of what I had found and the police functionary advised me to take it to the police station. This is at quite a distance and I have no car, so this was not an attractive proposition. The police woman said she asked me to do so because otherwise I might get some strange characters at my door. I told her I had not given any details to the two people I had phoned but that I was unwilling to come to the police station. She accepted that and took down all my details (more than I thought she needed, including my date of birth, but she said this was needed for registration!). I finally went out for my walk and after my return I got a phone call. It was the person who had lost the purse. I asked her some questions to make sure she was the right person and agreed that she would come and pick it up. A little later she appeared. A well groomed, upperclassy woman, approximately my age, who must spend a fortune on her hairdo. She did not seem excited at all. It occurred to me that she might have had my phone call before she had noticed that she had lost the purse, but this was not the case. When she had noticed she had immediately called her banks to block the cards, and when she had learned the purse had been found she had tried to unblock them again, but the banks could not do this immediately. She seemed quite irritated. After a lukewarm thank you she left with the purse. No flowers for the finder.

Spent practically all of toady clearing my desk and sorting out all the papers I have accumulated in more than a year because of my involvement in several organisations in different capacities. It is amazing how much information one gets using the internet. It often feels like more than I can reasonably cope with.