Dominic "The Hodge" Hodgson

This weekend has been an interesting one, not sure how to explain this one I’ll give it a go, the first part of the weekends adventures actually started on Thursday when in the morning I saw a twitpic’ed image posted by a friend of mine (Hello Anna!)

What would you do if you saw this?

Well I’ll was feeling like having a bit of fun (as I mostly do) and shot off an email..

Subject : We Have Your Bagel…

if you ever want to see it again, we want milkshakes… LOTS OF MILKSHAKES!!
muahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha

I left it there then went back to reports… about 20 minutes later however.. I received a reply..

How could you! That bagel was passed down to me by my father who died in the making of it…

I will not pander to these unreasonable demands.

You have 1 hour to replace the bagel before I send in the SWAT team with tear gas and ammo…

Now I probably should mention that a quick Google search on the latter part of the email address showed that the company was based in Brighton, so I responded accordingly.

SWAT teams are no match for us, we’ve converted Jack Bauer to be head of Bagel Theft….
Pander to our demands…..or the panda gets it as well!

A very witty pun I thought

How do I know you even have my precious bagel – HEY!

I want proof or no deal.

Hmm, I had to think creatively at this point (and that’s not my strong point)..

In our haste to our secret location, we forgot to bring a digital camera, however please accept this rendition of a bagel which we have quickly put together as proof..

 

Not to scale

I had no idea what response that would get

I have competed my half of the bargain.

I will return to the kitchen in 30 minutes, where by I expect to be reunited with my beloved bagel (just in time for afternoon tea) 

That phrase stuck a chord and I thought maybe I should start a different tactic..

Dear Friend,

This message might meet you in utmost surprise, Meanwhile, i have sent you this mail before but did not see your responds i believe you did not receive it so i have to resend it again. However, it’s just my urgent need for foreign partner that made me to contact you for this transaction. I am a banker by profession from Burkina Faso in West Africa and currently holding the post of Director Auditing and Accounting unit of the bank. I have the opportunity of transferring the left over bagels of one of my clients

Hence am inviting you for a business deal where this bagels can be shared between us in the ratio of 60/40. If you agree to my business proposal. Further details of the transfer will be forwarded to you as soon as I receive your return mail
Have a great day.
Yours.

MR. SAMUEL JUNA
BANK OF AFRICA.(BOA)
OUAGADOUGOU -BURKINA-FASO.

But sure enough after a few short minutes,

Dear Mr. Juna,

You maybe able to help me in one of two ways.

I do not deal directly in bagels, but I do know a man that would be very interested in your proposal.

His contact details are as follows:

Mr. B Man
NORTH LAINE, BRIGHTON
7 Bond Street, Brighton BN1 1RD
Tel: 01273 387171
Email: bagels@bagelman.co.uk

However you maybe able to help me, as I am in a slight predicament. I have fallen into a sticky situation with the notorious Bagel Theft terrorist group.
I have tried everything in the B.H.R.M (Bagel Hostage Release Manual) Including getting the F.B.I involved and giving into their demands.
I am at my wits end, all I want is to see my precious bagel once more (before I eat it)

Yours,

A few more emails were exchanged and the day ended…

Later that night I was explaining the day with Dr. Nash and had a quick look for a bagel delivery service in Brighton, I couldn’t find one.

The discussion went along the lines of…

• Me : I wish we could get her one delivered, that would be a funny ending
• Dr. Tim : hmmm
• Me : Too bad its too far to drop one off on the way
• Dr. Tim : its only an extra hour, if we didn’t hit traffic.. we could probably do it
• Me : …..that would be interesting

So we left the offices for our travels (it was cheaper and a lot quicker to drive) and the route was fine, apart from discovering Tims love of Little Chef’s…. 20 meters and 2 lanes away from the Little Chef turn off.

It was all going fine until we got to a toll bridge.. and it took aaggggeeeeessss and when I say aaaaagggggeeeesssssss I mean aaaaaaaaggggggggeeeeesssss…. I began to worry.

Working on the assumption of a 9 – 5 job and the fact we were an hour away from Brighton, things were not looking good, if we got to Brighton and she had left work, well then it would just be a waste of time ….. we had to call.

Now I’ve made some interesting phone calls in my life but asking someone you’ve never met to wait at work a little bit longer because two blokes are coming 250+ miles to deliver a Bagel… well that was going to take some beating.. or so I thought!

We then realised that… we didn’t actually have a Bagel to deliver and without that, its just two guys at the door (with the real possibility of the Police being called)

So we had to find a place that did Bagels… hmmm.

Luckily we remembered that she had previously recommend a bagel baker in the form of BagelMan.

This conversation proved to be an even more interesting one than the previous phone call because to be honest, I had naff all idea what the hell you put in a bagel, apparently my suggestion of “Ham and Cheese?” was a bit boring, so I asked the lady on the phone to recommend three for reasons I would explain at pickup.

So we arrive in Brighton.. or rather we arrive at the start of Brighton, it turns out there is a lot of small roads, bus routes, one way streets and.. other cars that make getting around Brighton difficult.

We eventually made it to the Bagel shop and had a lovely chat with the ladies behind the counter (who were all very friendly if not a bit weird-ed out by our travels)

We set off to the office and made it in good time… this is where it could all go wrong…

I`ll be honest, this all went a bit quickly but Amelia came out looking a little …very much apprehensive, it was THEN it dawned on her that we had infact actually travelled from Leeds and were not some of the guys from the office next door playing a trick, she explained how she actually had complied with our demands and put milkshakes in the kitchen.

We also said hello to Anna and Nat at clearleft as Anna is partly to responsible for all of this.

We left pretty quickly as we really had to get to Bournemouth and it was going to take another 2 hours! I was very happy with the experience (Tim wasn’t so sure we hadn’t just totally freaked a lovely woman out), we were left wondering what would happen next when two tweets appeared.

Just had the strangest experience – a bagel, hand delivered by two guys from Leeds on there way down to Bournemouth – Thanks Dominic!

and

@Thehodge That was a very tasty bagel – well worth the 256 mile drive!

 

Bagels for all!

 

 

 

I want to thank Anna for posting the picture.

Amelia for well having a good sense of humour, being a good sport and most of all… not calling the Police.

and Tim.. for driving too fast, stopping too fast, headbanging to radio 2 with me and being a bloody good mate

Usually at the end of a post or story like this there’s a moral or “things we’ve learned” but to be honest… this one doesn’t.

We had an idea, we went for it, we had a laugh.

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