
Operation Spoke is York's bike registration scheme.
Local police have their eye on several dodgy lockup-garage dealers in the area - the sort of people who advertise lots of bikes of hazy provenance on Gumtree or eBay.
(One of the suspected fences, apparently, is a teacher. If you're offered a bike that seems too cheap to be true in York by a man with patches on his elbows and red pens in his top pocket, beware.)
But it's hard to prove a bike has been nicked - which is where this database comes in.
We stumbled across a Spoke Registration Event on Sunday (top right), ambling round a deserted York College.

The writing only shows up under UV light, if you take your bike into a disco for instance, or a public toilet in Hull.
Well, he said it was a code number he was writing. It could have been Ha Ha Big Nose. Probably best to be nice to registration teams, just in case.

There may be something predictable about our young cycling nephews' cracker fillings next weekend...