Found an unattended rucksack.

[Moofreemum1]

Found a plain black unattended rucksack in a children park a min ago. I was with my toddler and didn't want to touch it. Didn't know what was in it e.g. drugs or now adays who knows what's in there. So I called the non emergency number and they said they don't have resources to go and check it.
Was I being unreasonable calling them? She said may be you could go back and check? Made me feel stupid for ringing. It prob is the case someone left it there but you can never be too careful now adays. So was ibu?

You were very lucky then as so many people in the vicinity were injured.

I am surprised though that surviving a rucksack bomb blast & witnessing the carnage (I was a local) & after living in NI (although granted that’s more cars) that you’re so relaxed about it.

I would definitely have left it alone... and most likely I would have either left the park or given it a very wide berth. You just can't be sure about things like that, yes it was most likely left accidentally but maybe not.

@fancy What makes you think I’m so relaxed about it? I’m realistic about it, something like that makes you appreciate that not all is evil, it’s rare and you also see the amazing way people come together depends on your outlook on life.

I was just about to say I woudn'nt touch it, but then i realised I would - I found a big (about a square metre) yellow plastic box on wheels a while back in the woods. It was full to the brim of packets of chicken wings! They had the name of a local brewery on the packets, so I imagine somebody must have wheeled it there from the pub they nicked it from. I expect the foxes dined quite well for a few days.

I once found a used pregnancy test and some shot glasses and a half eaten McDonalds salad in the same woods. It had been arranged in such a way that it looked like a little offering to Bacchus.

That’s true & perhaps relaxed is the wrong word. However I feel certain experiences have made me more doubting if that’s the right word. Maybe because I was a teenager at the time of the Brixton bomb & as a child saw the effects of the troubles on older relatives.

I probably would have had a careful look but to be honest it’s proably just a school kids who’s misplaced their bag or a parent or something.

Saying that, somebody found a bag in a park here once. It was full of drug related items and other suspicious items and it ended up getting spilt over the side of the park. The council came to pick it up. Very unusual for the area I live in too.

I was older, 24. 20 years ago, doesn’t seem that long ago!

It is & it isn’t!

However having said that as my earlier posts said I would think drugs over bomb. My friends dad was a tube driver, he used to find the most random things left on the tube!

This thread is a real eye opener.
If I found a bag in my local park the thought would never have crossed my mind that it could be a bomb or anything else sinister.
I'd have looked around for the owner and if no one in sight I'd have looked inside to see if I could find name/address to try and return it, and handed to police if no details.

I think it's so saddening and a sign of the times that the OP has to post on MN about an abandoned bag (Not bashing you at all OP I completely see where you are coming from). How awful that something that is probably so simple as a child abandoning a rucksack causes so much worry and fear in case it is something more malicious. I love this country and feel desperately sad with how unsafe we sometimes feel

While there are certain things I wouldn’t do eg walk through a park/certain estates at night alone eebagum I definitely don’t feel unsafe. Actually I feel safer in London then I do in the countryside!

It's not really a sign of the teams @eebagum It's been this way since I was a small child thirty years ago!

There is a national campaign about abandoned bags by British Transport Police, admittedly more to do with trains and stations, etc. “See it. Say it. Sorted.” A rucksack in a park I would be more likely to think drugs, crime or gang related than terrorism.

I love this country and feel desperately sad with how unsafe we sometimes feel sad

I worked in London the 7Os and 80s. Didn't feel unsafe, you just took as part of your daily routine that you didn't touch abandoned parcels or luggage and reported them to the appropriate authority. And conversely you didn't leave your luggage unattended.

Not leaving luggage unattended is still the advice from the rail companies, but people still do it. I was waiting for a friend at St Pancras International recently and there was a big suitcase apparently abandoned by a pillar. I watched this suitcase for a while and saw nobody looking as if they belonged to it. I was on the verge of going to find someone to report it to when the owner and his family sauntered up. I did give them a telling off, although some people would no doubt say I should have minded my own business.

@damntheman well I more meant from when my parents were little in the 40s. My was saying just the other day that he left his bag with his cricket clothes in the park overnight. He was worried his mum would tell him off for losing it after she'd told him to come straight home, he went back when he could the next day and it was still there. Not stolen, and not blown up by the bomb squad. Whereas if he said if my kids did that, he'd worried it would be nicked

Pressed post too soon... he'd be worried it would be nicked or gone through or thought to be something suspect!

No chance I’d be going near it, that’s idiocy

we had this in out local area - someone alerted the local forum, police where called & a poor young man was heavily questioned as to why he had hidden a bag in a bush & kept returning to it - turns out he was distributing charity bags through letter box's

@eebagum my dad was a teenager in the 40s and he often told stories about how freaked out his mum would get about him picking up shrapnel in the streets and possibly stumbling across explosives dropped during the war. But then he was a London kid, which might have been the difference!