The Bank Stress-Test

However, the judge at the trial did – eventually – agree that although it employed slightly unusual methodology our attempt to stress-test our local bank branch using sawn-off shotguns and stocking masks was a very useful method of determining just how well it would survive a run on its cash reserves. He therefore upheld our counter-claim that police were acting in a prejudicial manner when they surrounded our hideaway and told us to come out with our hands up.

The judge was also rather relived when we later handed over all the photos of him and his professional lady-friends doing some rather unusual stress-testing of their own, only this time utilising some rather fetching leatherwear and a variety of implements more usually encountered in a medieval torture chamber.

Although, the judge did insist that we withdraw our claim for compensation from the police for the emotional distress of being woken that early in the morning by a raid. He did, to his credit, though, insist that the police return all our shotguns, as we pointed out that hunting urban foxes was not all that illegal, as we were not using hounds, and that sawn-off shotguns are more environmentally-friendly in the crowded urban environment that the more conventional full-barrelled shotguns.

So, that was all good, and it enabled everyone in the gang to get to the airport in good time for our various journeys to those few countries in the world that - at present - have no extradition treaties with the UK, where all of us each hope to have a very long and very comfortable retirement.