I was standing on the platform at Long Hanborough station eavesdropping. It’s a pastime I quite enjoy but this time I got entirely the wrong end of the stick.

As I stood with a huddle of London-bound pinstriped commuters I overheard a conversation which I believed at the time began like this: “He’s into swinging.” Quite an admission at nine o’clock in the morning, I thought, particularly among a gathering of suited professionals. It soon became clear that I was mistaken and what I thought I heard was a great deal further from the truth.

As the conversation developed, and with it the use of words like breast stroke and front crawl, it became clear that “he” was into swimmimg. Two entirely different pursuits, I should imagine. I found my seat on the train and settled down for the trip up to London. A couple of stops on a lady sat beside me and started doing some paperwork. I was fiddling with my handbag, checking I had all my necessary items, tickets, phone , wallet… they were all there.

I zipped up my handbag, it was a zip top fastening. The problem was the lining had become entwined in the jaws of the zip and I couldn’t open it... however hard I tried. Noticing my dilemma the very nice lady beside me offered me her pencil. What on earth was I going to do with a pencil?

She kindly tried to stick her lead into the lining to try and coax it away from the zip. It wasn’t working so she then suggested I pull the zip as hard as possible while she held the bag.

I didn’t expect that I would be spending a large proportion of my commute to London with a woman I had never met before sprawled over my lap clinging on to my handbag. Mind you, neither did she. I also didn’t expect to enjoy the updates from our train driver quite as much. I do think he was fantasising in his cockpit that he was flying a jumbo jet to some tropical isle – you might not get a seat but you will be sure to know about the weather and where the exits are!

I missed my train on the return. I sat in the concourse at Paddington studying the departure boards, and rang my husband to update him on my ETA. I could hear our one-year-old daughter being very vocal in the background – she has two main words in her vocabularly… “uh oh” and “wee wee” (normally vocalised at every dog she sees).

I don’t recommend repeating those two words loudly at a busy London station unless you want to evacuate the immediate area... that worked very well. Back in Chipping Norton and with the recent good weather every lawnmowing lover has got theirs out of the shed and, judging by the busy whirr of mower motors, many people were grass cutting last weekend. My husband actually got excited about getting his out.

Once the lawn was shorn he made a point of walking me from the kitchen to our garden to reveal the fruits of his grass cutting labours. “Lovely dear,” I exclaimed, “can we have stripes next time?”