Bloody bike thieves

Dig this story: I'm at home yesterday morning doing a bit of housework when there's a knock on the door: figure it's somebody selling something useless - who else knocks on your door these days? - but, no, it's some builders from the new houses that are going up opposite and they're saying, 'ere, mate, someone's just nicked your bike. They're looking around the corner. They say the guy's still there. So what to do? I run out in the rain in my bare feet and - whaddya know? - some youth (white, English, maybe seventeen or eighteen) comes back around the corner on my silver Puegeot racer. I do a double check, and then a triple one - yup, it's definitely my bike. I run up the street after him, catch him up - not so bright, this lad - and grab hold of the seat post. What you doin' on my bike? I ask. It's my bike, he says. I quadruple check. No it's not, it's mine. A bit of toing and froing. I say, get off the bike. He says, okay, okay, it weren't me that nicked it. Get off the bike, I say. He says he will but it's not really happening. Maybe because I'm holding it upright. Or maybe something else (eg, he thinks he can escape if I let go). Anyway, it's all resolved when the builders come up and one of them pulls him off the bike and punches him in the face, busting open a cut around his eye. He protests something and then goes slinking up the road. I've got my bike back and though I'm thinking maybe I should go after the lad and apprehend him, tape his wrists and feet together and call the police, mainly I'm just interested in saying thanks to the builders and feeling grateful that I don't have to face the hassles of buses and tubes and stuff or shell out for some new wheels. The builders curse the youth of today and I buy them all a load of beer and crisps.

Funnily enough, this is the third time I've had a bike stolen and got it back. First time was in Wakefield, back when I was a super-trusting space cadet, and I left it just inside the door at Sainsbury's without any lock. It went - but then a wee bit later I got a call from the police saying they'd arrested two guys, that they were wanted for other things, and I could collect it forthwith. Another time I was in Canada and this old racer I found by a tree went missing from outside the train station in Guelph. Irony was that it was about the first time I'd ever locked it up. Anyway, I found that maybe a week later outside somebody's house. I knocked on the door, said, what you doin' with my bike, and the teenagers inside said they'd found it somewhere. Who knows? Maybe they did.

Other than that, I think I've had about five bikes successfully stolen from me, though only one of those I actually bought. The first one I nicked myself (naughty naughty!) and a couple were freebies off freecycle; the last two were ones I found abandoned in the street. The one I did pay for I bought brand new for a couple of hundred quid back in 2007; probably never do that again. Though it does of course serve me right for thinking a bike lock from the pound shop would survive the night in Leeds 6. Foolish boy!