The Eerie Beauty of the Hoverboard Lucozade Bandit

Many people say the best crime ever committed was by D.B. Cooper, the mysterious unknown bandit who hijacked an aeroplane, extorted a $200,000 ransom out of the US government and then parachuted to oblivion somewhere over the state of Washington. Others say the Antwerp Diamond Heist of 2003, when thieves made off with gems worth in excess of $100 million. Others say everything George Clooney did in Oceans 11 through 13. Wrong. Wrong. You're all wrong. This is. This is the greatest crime ever committed:

Appeal to identify — Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk)December 10, 2015

Your puny mortal brain is probably going to struggle to truly comprehend what exactly is going on here, because this is also the most original crime ever committed – a future crime, a crime that came in a wormhole from a place fifty or sixty years ahead of our current timeline, in a fitted tracksuit and trainers, a crime flickering whole and fully formed into a Mini Co-Operative and making off with a 24-pack of Lucozade – a crime nobody has ever seen before, a crime that redefines the very concept of crime.

Here's what's happening here: a man, who for reasons of brevity I will hereby refer to as 'The Future Prime Minister of Great Britain', waltzes nonchalantly into a Co-Operative on a hoverboard, picks up a sealed crate of Lucozade, motionlessly edges towards the door – his body unmoving, his face without emotion – and then pauses for a second, a future flex at the two be-fleeced shop assistants, shop assistants too baffled by the speed of a hoverboard, at the beauty of what is unfolding in front of them, too frozen by human progress to stop him – and he pauses for a second, defiant, strong and silent, and then just loops quietly around and zips out of the shop and down the road. If we do not give out awards for crime, we should at least give out awards for the footage of it. This 18-second CCTV clip should essentially edge out DiCaprio for an Oscar.

A lot of questions, a lot of questions. The most pertinent truly being: did our Future Prime Minister ever really plan this, or did he make up the crime on the fly? I'm going to posit a theory here and say that he did not really know he was doing the crime until the exact moment – seven seconds in, when he turns to gaze unflinchingly at the two shop assistants speed-walking towards him – that he realises he is holding the Lucozade. It's just the nonchalance, a man so detached from guilt that he becomes some new, crystalline, unknown emotion. That's when he realises that with a minor tilt of his feet he can outpace the two chasing guards without breaking a sweat. When he realises the true power of the swegway, the speed and the silence.

The basis for my theory is this: who would go to such lengths to steal a 24-pack of Lucozade? A 24-pack of Lucozade costs, and I've just checked, £18.99. But nobody wants a 24-pack of Lucozade. A 24-pack of Lucozade is nice to have, sure – that's your next 24 consecutive hangovers sorted, that's the next time you go to play football with the lads all figured out – but it's useful, like a big spoon, or a corkscrew. If you're going to commit hover-crime at a Co-Operative in Mitcham, at least steal something glamorous – a sleeve of cigarettes, a litre of bourbon, some fireworks, the cash register – and not a 24-pack of Lucozade. Who needs that much Lucozade? Why does a man who has demonstrated absolutely zero evidence that he has moved ever in his life – he is still, F.P.M., not moving, even as he makes his escape – need 24 bottles of energy drink? He does not need the energy to move his limbs because the hoverboard does his movement for him. And such is the deep truth of the Hoverboard Lucozade Bandit: he didn't plan this. He just saw a 24-pack of Lucozade and muscle memory took care of the rest.

There's a visual metaphor, in here, if you squeeze your eyes and look closely: it's 11 seconds in, when the two shop assistants – resplendent in their Co-Operative issue fleeces – don't know whether to run after F.P.M. or not. Because the speed of a swegway is hard to gauge: we're still, all of us, half-running to catch up. And there you've got the two living wage workers caught in swegway chasing purgatory, not knowing whether it's worth breaking into a run to chase him or not. They are the police and Lucozade Bandit is the swegway-loving public. They do not know how to deal with the threat of swegways. He only knows that the swegway is good.

This is a nice way to wrap up the year, I think. It's been a long year and full of horror. And we have developed this affordable technology that allows us to hover like stones skipping smoothly along the water, and lets us move through crowds like a sleek swimming shark, and lets us pick up a 24-pack of Lucozade and hover-moonwalk it out of a Co-Op in Mitcham, and that is fundamentally A Good Thing. This is how we should remember 2015: not the wars and the slaughters and the terror and the upheaval, but with one brave pioneer redefining crime one energy drink multipack at a time. God bless you, Lucozade Hoverboard Bandit. God bless you, and Merry Christmas.

@joelgolby

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