Dirty tricks

Walking between busts and statues in leafy Palermo after lunch, a guy was suddenly very close behind me and his female partner informed us that we had something "dirty" on us. Jun confirmed I had stuff all up the back of my T-shirt after I saw she had some sort of liquid on her backpack. The guy tried to usher me off the road as he produced a tissue but having previously read about this sort of ruse for light-fingered theft, we moved away from them before having to clean ourselves.

It may be one of the older tricks in the book (Lonely Planet), but I guess it still works sometimes otherwise people like these thirty-forty year olds wouldn`t still be trying it. This incident stands with the "pregnant" woman who undid Jun`s backpack in the street on our second day in the city (Jun felt something and told me to check), as the closest we`ve come to hassle. Though I was thorougly pissed off with having to walk around with what Jun rekons is foundation cream on my clothes for the rest of this afternoon, at least I wasn`t fooled this time...