No good sleazy blood-sucking pointless thieving scumbags...

..have stolen my bike. Me Dick Van Dyke. Within 100 feet (although 50 of those are vertical) of my desk. My beloved Trek was 'alf inched and ridden away but some Camden Town tosser(s). I only hope that the height of the saddle (I'm 6ft4) ripped their privates in two, and that the chain falls off. A lot. In a bus lane. With a massive bendy bus bearing down on them. W#nkers. I hope they die. B%stards.

I've calmed down a bit now.

I suppose I should be philosophical. It's about the seventh bike I've had stolen in my life, forming an almost unbroken chain from the Peugeot Elan (seen above) nicked from school back in about '88 (had to borrow my brother's bike for the paper round) through the Chinese racer stolen from the railings of my uni hall of residence 14 hours after I first arrived in London in '91.

And I suppose I did buy my bike, er, "second hand" from a slightly shady outfit in Balham, so it may just be possible that the old girl had been forcibly separated from her previous owner. Nevertheless, I'm more filled with impotent rage than a Daily Mail reader.

The worst bit was having to take the train home in rush hour wearing my somewhat perished spray-on lycra cycling shorts (size large, naturally). Still, it's always summer on the Victoria Line - although only 20 degrees at street level, it's always a comforting 37 degrees below ground. Despite the fact that heat is supposed to rise. Hmm.

I'll round off with a selection of curses from the net, each of which are directed a thousand times at the bike rustlers of NW1:
1. Biblical: Hear this, O thou son of a Philistine, for you will be whipped with a thousand scorpions
2. Elizabethan: Thou rank boil-brained coxcomb
3. Random: May your underwear be filled with the fulvous eructate fingering from the refuse void of a Abysmian Whippinthig
4. Irish: Go bpléasca na gráinneoga cealgrúnacha do bhall fearga ("May the malevolent hedgehogs blow up your manly part")
and finally:
5. Arabian (well, sort of): "May a quartet of dyslexic dingos puke monkey crazy glue over your delicious log"