Friend and foe alike say I have one of those faces - it encourages others to share confidences. Perhaps they're right.

It is less than a year since a concert soprano, within five minutes of our meeting, divulged where she wished to have her ashes scattered once she was called to service in the heavenly choir.

Furthermore, I'm the only person in the village to be told - without prompting or, incidentally, wishing to know - her age by a well-preserved widow.

Close female friends have frustratingly failed to elicit this information.

The other day, I was in Headington when a funeral cortege passed.

I stood head bowed.

A medium-height, stocky, smartly-dressed man, who turned out to be 51 and on lunch break from his office job, was alongside, his hat removed in reverence.

"I hope everything goes as the departed would wish," he said in a low voice, betraying his Northern Ireland roots.

"Undertakers are caring people," I assured him.

"It's the service that bothers me," he continued.

"It's in my will what I want and (the Lord sparing) who I want at mine, but will they make a pig's ear of the singing and readings?"

The opening hymn would be The day thou gavest Lord is ended.

This would be followed by The Mountains of Mourne, in respect of his County Down birthplace.

Then there would be a couple of readings, and two more hymns, the names of which I can't remember.

"I'm thinking of having a rehearsal, sure I am," he said, his Ulster-ness shining forth.

A parson had said he could have a coffin-free, flowerless run-through with future mourners present, although any committal prayers would have to wait for the real thing'.

Assuming the role of the Devil's Advocate, I pointed out there was nothing to say the real thing' would live up to the rehearsal.

"That's right enough," he conceded. "But I'd know it was fine first time. At the real thing', I'll be past caring."

So saying, we crossed the road and had a pre-wake pint in the Britannia where he took my phone number so he could invite me to the rehearsal.

"Dont buy a ticket yet - wait for a minute or two and you'll save a couple of quid."

The advice came not from a motorist unimpressed as many of us are at the swingeing increases imposed by the city council on evening car parking, but from one of the authority's own attendants.

How different from the attitude of a dog warden who, within 60 minutes of a domestic pet, collared and micro-chipped, being released by mischievous children from an East Oxford home, had whisked the pooch off to a dog pound beyond Aylesbury, which demanded a fee of more than £100 from its owner to ensure its safe return.

Dog-napping with menaces seems an apt description.

" . . . and that is how the daffodil got its trumpet."

So ended the story told to a small, wide-eyed girl by her great-grandfather as they looked at the display of these flowers that brighten Grandpont nature park.

The years rolled back to when my grandad told me the same tale; how disobedient elves hid their noisy golden trumpets in the heart of yellow flowers to escape the wrath of the fairy queen; how she rumbled their trick and made the instruments a permanent feature of the flower.

The girl trotted off to give the daffodils closer inspection.

"It makes a change from stories of monsters and aliens," he said as we recalled similar stories from our childhood - how the ladybird got its spots; how the brave robin got its red breast, and so on.

We turned to the child - just in time to stop her trying to remove one of those golden trumpets.

Overheard near a fruit and vegetables stall in Gloucester Green Market: "I don't care if it is called champagne, I'm not paying that price for rhubarb!"