Thanks,
@JimmyBlue. That wasn't a realistic possibility until recently. I upgraded my phone at Xmas; it's predecessor was damaged, misbehaving becausevof physical damage and I was spending a lot of time "nursing" it. Your suggestion is now viable. I do have some reservations about keeping too many eggs in one basket; I don't have a PC and nowadays it's virtually impossible to exist without Internet access for banking, utilities, local council services, etc. My railcard was in its own wallet/folder along with an oyster card with a face value of <£2 (deliberately) and the total loss is more aggravating than financially serious.
The real lesson is that it was my own lack of care, in so many ways. I showed the railcard as I bought a ticket, rushed over a footbridge to get onto an imminent train and stuffed the card into a jacket pocket. I could have, but didn't, transferred the card and it's holder into a much better pocket elsewhere, at any time during the next 5 hours! Mea Culpa. I've been meaning to replace the waterproof jacket for the last 5 years, because I've never liked that it has just 2 outside zippable pockets - too small to get gloves, hat and certainly not a scarf into them. Essentially the jacket has never really met my needs and on Monday I allowed myself to be complacent and just didn't show due care and attention to my circumstances. I even didn't "wake up" when there was a brief, silly, distraction right beside me after which the perpetrators immediately got off. As it happens, even if I had realised then that I had become a victim, it would still have been too late to do anything. That all happened so quickly.
I must gracefully accept that I carry a lot of the blame for my own lack of caution - crime is potentially all around us. This doesn't make criminality excusable; but my loss could have been avoided by better care from me. To add to the irritation, railcard authorities impose a £10 admin fee for a replacement, which could be waivered if I go to a Police Station, report the crime and get a crime reference number. I know that the admin cost to the Police Service is more than £10 just for that bureaucracy, regardless of whether a report in my home town in Berks for a minor event on London Underground would lead to any sort of resolution. The old railcard has been cancelled, I've paid £10 and a replacement will arrivevin the next 10 days, I'm told. Network Rail don't log railcard details when they sell tickets with railcard discounts; mine had 11 months of 3yrs life left on it - so there is potentially 11 months of fraud available to the thief.
Lesson relearnt!
