IF there’s much more rejection and disapproval this week, a chap could get a complex.

Take Monday evening. All was set for a visit from youngsters – and in some cases their mums – celebrating Halloween.

Determined to avoid threatened tricks, I had a large tin of chocolates and toffees ready to be doled out. The first quintet arrived. One lad eyed the tin with disapproval.

“Is this all you’ve got?” he asked. “I don’t like these. Don’t you have any marshmallows? I only like marshmallows.”

I apologised, but wanting to maintain some good humour, I noticed he was wearing a costume that required bright red braces. Believing that old jokes are often the best, I resorted to posing the age-old question: “Why does Prince Harry wear red, white and blue braces?” (I first heard this when the central character was Winston Churchill, the answer being: To keep his trousers up.) “He doesn’t,” replied the Marshmallow Kid, adding, before turning away: “He wears a belt.”

* THE blow was still smarting the following morning when I arrived in Oxford and called at Waitrose’s new supermarket on Botley Road. Leaving the store was a woman, probably in her early 30s, carrying a large box of groceries. It appeared to be very heavy.

Chivalry leapt forth and I offered to take the box and carry it to her car.

“Do I look weak and helpless?” she asked, none to kindly. “If I can eat the stuff, I can carry the stuff.”

Exit woman with haughty sniff. I retreat with tail between legs.

* THE grandfather was excitedly pointing to a large piece of masonry, more than the size of a snooker table, being lifted to some spot as yet unannounced by the gigantic crane on the Westgate Centre site.

His granddaughter, about 10, was clearly bored; the sigh and the eye rolling betrayed all.

“I’m not my brother,” she announced somewhat brusquely. “I’d like to see a raspberry doughnut.”

* THERE will be rejection of a fashion later this week when four of the five clerics to be interviewed for the prestigious appointment as Vicar of St Mary’s University Church in the High get the thumbs down – if that’s what the Church of England does.

But we are likely to be kept waiting for at least a week or more before the chosen one is revealed It’s as bad as the Strictly Come Dancing results show.

* CYCLOON of the Week: Impatiently ignores the safe bike lane along Botley Road and prefers to ride down the centre of the busy and prohibited bus lane – with a toddler, devoid of helmet, in a seat behind the saddle.