This is one of those bizarre stories, where you begin reading and sympathise with the poor people featured:

…in the past six months alone, more than 63,000 mobile phones, nearly 5,000 laptops and 5,800 PDAs have been left in the back of London’s black cabs…

That seems an awful lot, but you can understand that it’s fairly easy for a phone or PDA to slip out of your pocket. Not so much with a Laptop, but still fairly understandable.

But then you get to this bit:

cabbies have also found left on their back seats a dog, a hamster, a harp (a harp?) and even a baby

Somebody left their child in the back of a cab? And how exactly do you manage to forget a harp? It doesn’t exactly just slip out of your pocket, now, does it?

There certainly are some strange people in London!