Having rather more disposable income than usual at the moment because of the plummeting interest rates and my friendly tracker mortgage I am susceptible to ‘recommendations’ in bike mags for gizmos of various kinds. This time I have bought a Xena bike lock, a chumky bit of shatter proof steel that just looks good and feels so nice in the hand that it could really have no other purpose and still be good to have around.

It locks through a hole in your break disk and automatically sets itself and will screech at 110db if tampered with. I tried it and its loud. In fact I went into an oblique panic trying to unlock the thing to stop that noise. In the meantime neighbours burst out of their front doors to see what the racket was about. I appologised. Verdict: too embarrassing to use (at least at my street).