A SEVERED, dried-up, mummified hand was found by Swindon Museum and Art Gallery collections project manager Stef Vincent in a box in the stores.

It was duly catalogued and sent for expert analysis.

The incident reminds me why I was probably wise not to go into museum work.

Although I like to think I’d behave exactly as Stef did when she made the find – with diligence and consummate professionalism – I can’t say for sure that I’d be able to resist certain temptations.

Hiding it at the bottom of a box of cakes at the Christmas party, for example.

Or leaving it in colleagues’ desk drawers, perhaps with a little statue of Anubis, and feigning complete innocence.

Or putting a glove on it, putting it up my sleeve, shaking somebody’s hand, leaving them holding it and then screaming.

Or attaching it to the top of a small radio-controlled car and making it scuttle after people.

Or attaching it to a small drone and making it tap people on the shoulder.

The older I get, the more I become convinced I’m not quite right.

British justice is just a joke

IT’S time for another instalment in our occasional series, Things People Haven’t Been Jailed For In Swindon.

There’s been a fine crop over the last week or so alone.

For example, there was a bloke who one day stole a purse from a handbag hanging from a trolley in a supermarket.

The next day, in another supermarket, he stole another purse, but this time the victim was an 84-year-old woman. The purse contained photographs of immense sentimental value and the victim was so horribly traumatised that she ended up having to seek counselling.

The thief skipped free with a suspended sentence – although he’s promised to return the photos. How noble.

Then there was the drunken thug in a car park who spat in the face of a paramedic. The paramedic was trying to help and comfort him.

The list of meaningless non-punishments handed to him includes a 12-week curfew.

Moving on from thievery and thuggery to filthy perversion, a landlord hid a spy camera in a female tenant’s room. When the deviant’s laptop was seized, it was found to contain no fewer than 228 images of child abuse, including 93 in the most horrific and evil category. The pervert’s punishment – if that is the right word – included a suspended sentence and attending a sex offender programme.

The real star of the week, however, was a man who already had form for sexual offending. In 2012 he subjected a 16-year-old girl to a prolonged sexual assault during which he grabbed at the minor’s underwear.

Having got away with a community order, and now aged 25, he found himself in the dock once more. This time around, he admitted several offences including distributing photographs of children being raped.

Think about that for a moment, if you can bear to. He tracked down images of children suffering the most horrific abuse imaginable, children who probably wouldn’t have suffered in such a way were it not for child pornography having a market among human refuse like him, and passed it on to other pieces of garbage. Like the perverted landlord, he got away with a suspended sentence and some other assorted nonsense.

I’m sure we’d all like to thank our lawmakers and judiciary for doing so much to make us safer.

Either that or we could petition for the symbol of British justice, the woman with the sword and the scales, to be replaced.

Perhaps something more appropriate to 21st century British justice should be chosen, such as a figure of a clown holding a comedy flower and a water pistol.

Were the system significantly less useless, it would still be useless.

Deal or no deal for phone box

LAST week I wrote about the new phone boxes which have been popping up in the town centre.

Like many Swindon people, I’ve been wondering what they’ll be used for.

So far, readers have told us some of them are being used by flyposters and graffiti artists, albeit not for making calls.

The company installing the boxes, which it has done in the face of fierce opposition from the council, says it expects plenty of phone use from people calling relatives in distant lands. However, some people with relatives in distant lands have been in touch to tell me they have mobiles with international call apps for that sort of thing.

One or two other people have been in touch to point out that although they can’t speak for the new boxes, many BT phone boxes in towns and cities across the country still have a loyal clientele among certain business people and their customers.

Anxious-looking people can often be seen making calls from these boxes, only to have somebody arrive in a car not long afterwards and give them whatever item they’ve ordered.

I’ve no idea what these emergency items might be, though.

Perhaps somebody reading this could enlighten me.