IF there was ever a reason to switch off mobile phones when in public places, it happened on the park-and-ride bus into Oxford.

The vehicle was full and after forfeiting a seat to a frail woman with a shopping bag the size of a tennis court, I stood at the foot of the steps to the upper deck, hemmed in on both sides; to the left a serious-faced girl whose eyes were fixed on some distant horizon, while to the right was a young man, his packed lunch poking from the bag between his feet. His mobile phone rang, he smiled and greeted the caller, clearly delighted.

However, joy soon faded. He was in trouble – and, by the sound of it, through no fault of his own. He was getting an ear bashing for the actions of someone else in his family. He tried appeasement with phrases like “Whatever you say,” and “I have my problems with her as well,” but this broke none of the ice that was forming.

I was less than two feet from the young man; there were no leaflets in the rack which I could read in an attempt to show indifference. Searching my pockets to find anything to create a diversion was impossible because I was hanging on to a pole for dear life to prevent falling on the aforementioned frail woman.

All I could do was smile wanly when he turned his troubled eyes in my direction.

Eventually the caller rang off leaving the young man in a sorry state. He caught my eye, clearly embarrassed.

“So much for leaving domestic problems at home,” he remarked. “You'd have done better to leave the phone,” I replied. He didn’t disagree.

  • FOR years he was a news vendor in the middle of the city and could be relied upon to tell my colleagues and I that we had “missed a damned good story”, something he could have prevented had he bothered to ring the Oxford Mail.

    He always had an opinion on most things and retirement has not changed this.

    On Wednesday when we met in the BHS cafe, he was sounding forth on the Iraq war inquiry. “If Blair and Bush invaded the place to protect oil, they made a b***** of it.

    Look how much a litre of the stuff costs now compared with eight years ago,” he declared. “I daren't think what the price would be if we’d lost.”

  • THIS week my elder son had to undergo an operation in hospital.

    Friends and acquaintances spotted that I was not my usual noisy self.

    They meant well, but their advice not to worry and that he would be fine, did nothing to reduce parental anxiety.

    And I swear that if another person had put a comforting hand on my shoulder and said he was ‘in the best place’, I would have bopped him or her on the nose.

    Hadn’t they heard of MRSA?