The Godfather

Our four days were up and we returned to Buenos Aires. Mum said it was nice to be home when we reached the flat. Nice. Surely that implies a sense of well being and comfort? I hope so. The US Masters Golf was just starting, time to get couched.

The next day after a usual coffee, walk, lunch scenario mum decided to go for a stroll. I stayed in for the golf. She returned about an hour later. How was it? Well good up until some git ran up and grabbed her necklace and legged it.

Lessons - never wear jewellery in Bs As, never walk down quiet streets and try not to get unlucky - somethings are unavoidable. A lesson we learnt later is that if you fancy doing a spot of insurance fraud this is as good a place as any.

However, she wasn't hurt, it wasn't an heirloom and it was covered by insurance. Police station here we come. Buenos Aires has one for tourists and thankfully it was only a few blocks away.

Three policeman are lounging about, the head guy is behind a desk. Mum explains what happened: a man mugged her on Diagonal Norte; they start ring police stations. The head honcho informs us that we should say it took place on Maipu. This means we can go to a station 2 blocks away that has no queue. Okay, whatever. There's a TV on in the corner. "The Godfather". Great film i say, the cop's watched it "over 300 times", seems to fit in with his attitude to crime. Try to leave without laughing.

Walk to the other station. No English speaker about so they ring the tourist office and one of the guys we'd seen there ambles over 5 minutes later. He then proceeds to type furiously at the computer for ages. He asks mum 2 questions - her age and passport number. 15 minutes later we have our police report, the crime has moved to Florida street, lots of elaborate details we never mentioned have been added and a bizarre discussion on whether faster or fastest is appropriate for his typing skills - but we have our crime number.

An extra bottle of wine that night, but all in all it could have been a lot worse. The picture is where the robbery happened, or was it Maipu or was it Florida?