The Acrobat Crew

 

APRIL FOOL'S DAY 1992

Friday morning, in broad daylight, on the third of April, a minibus pulls up in leafy Lincolnshire outside the house of an art collector. Eight men jump out of the vehicle. They're head to foot in black. One of them is carrying a package under his right arm. As they approach the front door of the eighteenth century mansion, the van they arrive in drives away and parks out of sight, at the side of the house.

There's this one picture on a wall of our local pub that stands out like a sore thumb. Most people assume it's a print and hardly give it a second glance. It certainly looks like it could be a scene from the Manchester Ship Canal, and the foreground of the piece has Lowry's trademark matchstick men and women, but the truth of the matter is that no one really knows if it is actually a Lowry print or something by another artist after the manner of his iconic style.

When Saturday came, and Boston United played Altrincham FC in the GM Vauxhall Conference League, exactly nine hundred people attended the game, including nine Manchester lads from the Acrobat crew, who had jibbed in, good style, both under and over the turnstiles. I for one, thought they would have been better off walking a few hundred yards up Claremont Road to see Man City beat Leeds United four nil at Maine Road like most of the blokes in this pub did.

But there you go, they had their own agenda and they were sticking to it. The Acrobats, who for reasons best known to themselves, always dressed in black, reputedly went on a two day bender around Lincolnshire. However, I suspect that part of the jolly was to do a little reconnaissance work for the mission that suited the true purpose of their extra long weekend away.

Of course some of us knew what the picture really was, and almost exactly how long it had been hanging on the pub wall. I (along with others) remember the day that it went missing. It was the first of April nineteen ninety two. Shakespeare's Sister were at number one in the UK charts, and the
hostelry was extremely busy. Then, when the picture amazingly reappeared, the following Sunday, one of the regulars suggested that it had been stolen for a joke, a prank, perhaps, by someone from another pub.

There it was, hanging in its usual place on the wall at one end of the bar. There was no visible damage to the artwork or the glass, or the frame. In fact, if anything, the colours looked brighter and the images appeared to be clearer now than ever before. Then there were those of us who knew different, not to mention a certain gang of lads who travel up and down the country to supposedly watch a game of football anywhere they can and to cause a bit of mayhem and to drink a shed full of beer in the process.

They say that they actually support City, because they started off as 'Mind yer car mister?' kids whenever the blues were playing at home. However, these days they only go to watch the Cityzens when they play away from Maine Road. Therefore, when City play at home and a different local side is playing away against another club, even at the other end of the country, if it suits their purposes, that is where you'll find them.

So on April Fools Day that year, the afore mentioned 'City fans' just happened to stroll into my local pub, as they sometimes did, for an afternoon snifter. That was of course, the very same day that the framed picture disappeared. Rumour had it that this gang were planning a long weekend trip to watch Altrincham FC play away from home against Boston United. Most of the local gangs, in those days, continued the Victorian tradition of naming themselves after the streets where they lived, like the Scuttler gang the 'Bengal Tigers' from Bengal Street in Ancoats, and the 'Beach Boys' better known as 'The Beech' who hailed from Beech Road. Those of us who knew the Acrobat crew, also knew that they were from the flats near the old shopping precinct.

No one could possibly foretell, that a bunch of drunken Mancunians would be arriving in the city of Lincoln in the early hours of Thursday morning, for a mammoth pub crawl on their way, supposedly, to Boston for a football match on the Saturday. Also, that somewhere, carefully wrapped up, and concealed inside a black hooded sweat shirt, they had brought with them an inexpensive, but adequately framed Lowry pub print.

Once inside the house, the Acrobats set to work, being careful not to touch or disturb any of the numerous works of art in the priceless collection. They searched for and soon found the piece they were looking for, it was known as 'Northern River Scene' but was actually a Lowry painting of the Fosdyke Canal in Lincoln which had been bought the previous year, at auction, for a significant wad of cash.

One of the Acrobats lifted it from the wall and laid it face down on the art dealer's billiard table. Then, taking a Swiss Army knife, he expertly opened up the frame and liberated the original artwork, quickly doing the same thing to the print they had brought with them and swapping the two, fastening up the cheap pub print inside the expensive frame with all the letters of provenance and art dealers' marks stamped on the back. He offered it up, and repositioned it, carefully, in the very same place on the art connoisseur's wall.

Exactly seven and a half minutes after their arrival, the Acrobats were seen driving away in a minibus with cloned number plates. And oh yes, the original Lowry painting, which has been innocently hanging in our local boozer ever since, is now worth several hundred thousand pounds. As for the inexpensive print that previously hung on the pub wall, well, it sold to a private collector nine years and two months later, for £443,750, on the eighth of June two thousand and one, at Christie's auction house.

And just for the record, in April nineteen ninety two, Boston beat Altrincham, by two goals to one, on Saturday the fourth. The official attendance was eight hundred and ninety one, but if you know, you know. That's that, end of story, nothing more to say... Or is there?

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