NEVER known to miss a photo opportunity, three Japanese visitors were clicking away in New Road on Tuesday as protesters against county council cuts made their feelings felt outside the building where our leaders were gathered.

“Is this revolution?” asked one, carefully choosing his words while brandishing a camera that resembled a rocket launcher. A fair question, bearing in mind the Land of the Rising Sun isn’t famous for permitting protests.

I couldn’t anticipate the demands of the children cheerfully holding placards calling for Botley Library to be saved, but was fairly confident in saying – judging by the expressions of adult protesters – that council leader Keith Mitchell would not be leaving under the cloak of darkness and bolting to Bognor Regis or some other place of refuge, thus emulating the actions of Egypt’s former President Mubarak.

It was difficult to determine whether the visitors were satisfied with the reply. The Japanese can be so inscrutable.

HOWEVER, there was more than a whiff of revolution in the air on a late afternoon bus to the Pear Tree park-and-ride. Word was out that parking charges would be re-installed at the five P&R sites. They had been abolished in autumn 2008.

“What with increased petrol prices, this will double my daily cost of coming to work,” said Andy, a bank worker in Cornmarket Street.

“If I have to pay for parking in Oxford I might as well take my car into the city centre and add to the general chaos,” said Sonia, a Stonesfield lady who lunches with friends every Tuesday.

But it was recently retired Ray, an Oxford graduate proudly wearing The Queen’s College tie, who showed the greatest concern. “We are again no better than Cambridge. They charge. How can I hold my head up when I meet friends from there?” he asked. “I’ve teased them unmercifully since we abolished the charges.”

PERHAPS the immediate post-Second World War decade was the wrong time to subject schoolboys to RC Sherriff’s play Journey’s End as part of GCE studies, as the all-too-recent loss of fathers and older brothers was still raw, without poring over the 1914-18 conflict which is the story’s setting.

At the time I saw a civic theatre’s indifferent production and vowed never again to cross the threshold of a place if that was on offer. But time is a great healer and from what the critics have said, David Grindley’s production, at the Playhouse next week, is something not to miss.

The fact that the British Legion Poppy Fund benefits from the sale of every ticket is an added incentive. Our war-damaged 21st century servicemen and women need all the help they can get.