Bumping an old thread after some suspicious behaviour this evening.

Walking home tonight at about 8.15pm, my wife and I saw two blokes on scooters behaving oddly - moving very slowly along Garthorne and then down Whatman Road.

They stopped at the junction of Whatman and Bovill Road, and one stayed there while the other went up and parked outside a house which has a motorbike under a cover. He then dismounted and started poking about under the cover. I crossed the road and asked him what he was doing.

He walked straight past me and said that he was "looking for a mate's bike" and jumped back on his scooter and took off at speed. His mate, who had been waiting at the junction, went with him.

I could be wrong, and could be just paranoid, having had my own scooter stolen just before Christmas, but these blokes appeared to me to be up to no good. I was less confident about this before I spoke to them, but the speed they took off at makes me pretty sure they were trying to steal the cover, the bike or some bits off it (apparently there's a second-hand trade in mirrors). I spoke to the neighbour whose bike they were looking at and he hadn't heard anything.

On the plus side, I did manage to catch the number plate of the bloke I spoke to - I'm not going to put it up here in case it was all completely innocent, but I can share it via PM if anyone else has seen any similar behaviour and is worried and wants to compare notes.