This weekend marks 7 years, more or less, of perhaps the most pointless regular diary series on DK, with the appropriate title of Saturday Night Loser's Club. So how to mark this "occasion", such as it is? Well, not with anything to do with this "anniversary", since 3CM is a loser, after all. Instead, something short, but not so sweet, about a report of a Stradivarius violin that was lost in a particularly loser way, but which was initially reported to have been recently recovered. However, closer examination of the recovered instrument revealed that the violin in question wasn't what it seemed. More below the flip.....
This mess began back in December 2010 when violinist Min-Jin Kym was buying a sandwich at a London train station, and left her Strad unattended for a few minutes, as reported in this article in the Telegraph:
"[Pret A Manger] worker Hafid Salah told of Miss Kyms [sic] panic when she realised her violin had vanished.
He said: She and her friend were on computers and iPhones and not looking at their bags.
She came up to me at the counter and said Have you seen my bag? Call the police. Can you get the CCTV? You have to do something.
She was really upset and panicking."
Granted, if you're carrying around anything that valuable, you should never leave it unattended, not even for a second, which is the subtext of the 2 snarky/harsh comments left on the article.
There was a recent report a few weeks back in the Telegraph that Bulgarian police had apparently recovered the instrument. However, the newest report from the Telegraph says that this is not so:
"However, although the violin was marked with the master’s name, examination by an expert revealed it to be a copy which is less than 100 years old and of limited value."
The story essentially got "retweeted" in long form in
this article from
Time.
Losers abound here, it seems, not least of whom is the thief, of course, one John Maughan, as noted in this article also from the Telegraph:
"The court heard Dublin-born Maughan is a serial thief with over 40 different aliases, 26 different dates of birth and over 65 convictions, mostly for theft."
There's also Kym herself, for her inattentiveness regarding the violin, even though this does come pretty close to blaming the victim. But it says something about human nature that you can't automatically assume that your possessions are safe if left unattended, i.e. that people are jerks by nature and not automatically nice and respectful. Or something of that sort.
It is possible to read the most recent Telegrapha little confusingly and infer that the original violin was actually a fake Stradivarius and not a real one, if you hadn't followed the story from the beginning. However, it seems reasonably clear to me, upon reflection, that:
1. The Bulgarian authorities recovered a violin, but not the one that was originally stolen from Kym.
2. The lost violin is still at large somewhere.
It's an incredible long shot that she'll ever recover it. It would be nice, and fingers crossed. But I'm not holding my breath.
With that, on to the start of year 8 (!!!???), of SNLC, and time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week. However, anyone who stops by here should know that I'm not around to monitor the proceedings, and thus can't reply to anything or mojo comments. If one of the regulars wants to take on the task for the evening, feel free. It'll be pretty light duty :) .