PROBLEMS, some self-inflicted, blighted a cold but sunny Tuesday morning. It promised to be a difficult day with my motto: ‘It’s a wonderful life, so enjoy it!’ in danger of being swallowed by self-centred gloom. Something had to be done.

It was then Old Reliable – Oxford itself – took hold of the situation. An orange-berried cotoneaster fairly shouted its presence from the river basin at Osney Lock. I took out my mobile phone with its camera facility. I should explain this was the first time it had been called into service and yours truly hadn’t a clue what to do. Eventually frustration took over. “Damn the picture!” I exclaimed and began to walk off, only to trip over a duck that had come to investigate my behaviour, sitting only a yard or so away.

I apologised (to a duck?). He quacked angrily and waddled to the safety of the Thames.

THE young woman in a leather jacket, ultra-short, figure-hugging woollen dress, black tights and knee-length boots came into view. She moved with catwalk elegance.

We exchanged smiles as we passed. It was when I took a rear view glance that I saw the outline of a can in a back pocket obscured by the short dress, turning high fashion and style to low comedy.

TWO ‘must haves’ are next year’s pocket diary and an Audrey Hepburn calendar.

I could live without the first, but the second, a reminder of the days when we young men dreamed of taking her home to meet mother, is essential.

The Blessed Audrey had been secured and I looked for a diary with a design that would stand out on my ever-cluttered desk.

There it was in a Cornmarket Street shop – a slimline diary festooned with union flags. But horror! The flags were upside down, the signal for distress. I went to another shop and the situation was the same on its brand of diaries. I know times are hard, but...

STEPHANIE was almost three, a blonde curl poking from beneath her pink teddy bear woollen hat. He was of uncertain age, unshaven and – at a guess – unwashed since the turn of the month. Their paths crossed in Bonn Square She was eating biscuits from a bag. Without a word from her mother, she pulled out a biscuit and held it up for the man. He thanked her with tears in his eyes. She beamed with delight.

See what I mean about the Oxford cure?