Despite the relentless efforts of the Shanghai traffic boffins to drive all bicycles off the road and onto the footpath, my trusted steel steed is still the preferred way of moving around the neighbourhood.

And so it came to pass that I decided to ride to the Bank of China for a cash injection.

Upon my parking and locking my two-wheeler, I noticed a vagrant who seemed to be inspecting rubbish bins for plastic bottles, albeit with little enthusiasm and my sixth sense told me that he was up to something.

Since it was just after lunchtime, it was relatively quiet at the bank and, much cash-richer, I was ready to remount my iron horse after a mere five minutes. However, my machine seemed a bit heavy to push.

Damn! A flat front tyre.

Funny that. The front tyre had received a refill of fresh air that very morning and I was not aware of having ridden over a sea of nails, oceans of glass shards or having been exposed to gun fire.

Anyway, tyres do burst, get punctured or simply wrinkle with old age so I resigned myself to having to hunt for a roadside bike-fix factotum, which, in bike-unfriendly Shanghai, is not as easy as in, say, Beijing, where those itinerant repair guys are 13 to the dozen.

I had not moved more than a mere 5 mestres when a man passed me slowly on his two-wheeler with, surprise, surprise, a bicycle pump strapped to his luggage carrier.

What luck. How incredibly fortunate. An angel sent from heaven. And at just the right moment.

My new-found friend helpfully and without prompting dismounted and diagnosed with surprising accuracy that I had a flat front tyre and he would be happy to re-inflate it for me. "Just step aside from the crowd," he resolutely directed.

Quite overcome by this not only unexpected but, by any measure, unusual bout of generosity on the part of the friendly Shanghainese, I pushed my machine into the gutter.

Then, my helpful "Angel of Mercy" did not try to inflate the tyre but, surprise, surprise, produced a folding satchel containing a full kit of bicycle repair tools.

With a mere twist of the wrist he had the offending inner tube exposed and immediately pushed the valve sideways and showed me a tear in the rubber at that very spot.

Huh? Strange! But, again, these things happen and who cares; after all, the inconvenience would be minimal as I had been so fortunate as to have my path crossed by a fully fledged and "armed-to-the-hilt" bicycle repair man.

What luck. What a coincidence.

To my further amazement, my "Guardian Angel" had a spare inner-tube on board too and for a mere 88 yuan (double eight for good luck, I guess), he was prepared to accommodate me, as a friend, there and then.

Being attired in a dressy business shirt and suave French necktie, I felt poorly equipped to bargain with him; however, before I was able to make my counter offer, luckily, the penny dropped.

It suddenly dawned on me that I might be the corpus delicti in a clever repair scam. The suspicious-looking scavenging guy could have been the tyre-deflator and the mobile repair guy might be the other half of a crooked partnership.

While I pretended to bargain for a lower price, I moved my bike closer to the repairman's and when we had (almost) settled on 50 yuan, I snapped my bicycle cable lock around his rear wheel and mine.

Police hot-line 110 was dialed on my mobile phone and when I started to explain my location to the operator, the repairman-charlatan quickly gathered all his tools and possessions and bolted, leaving his (dilapidated and rather crappy) bike behind. Never have I seen someone run so fast on a sultry summer afternoon.

The police told me, upon arrival, that this kind of petty crime - and variations on the theme - were not only common but also a damn nuisance and rather hard to eradicate. The officer commended me for my presence of mind to at least get the trickster to flee and leave his bike behind. Quite likely though, the scoundrel would probably steal another bicycle for his "business" the same evening, he opined.

The happy ending: a real roadside bicycle repair guy was eventually located and a new-from-the-box inner-tube was installed for a very reasonable 20 yuan.

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