I HAD popped into Queen Street’s Marks & Spencer to pass on good wishes to new manager Kevin from his former customers at the Banbury store, catching up with him in the basement.

This floor is served by adjacent escalators – one up, one down.

Pleasantries completed, I made for the up escalator, stepping on behind a man no longer in the first flush of youth. Reaching half way, he spotted a woman of similar vintage on the down stairs.

Waving and muttering about women who insisted on wandering off during shopping expeditions, he indicated he would catch up with her. He reached the ground floor seconds before the woman reached the basement, only for her to board the up escalator.

Their looks of bewilderment as they again passed each other were hilarious.

“For Christ’s sake get off and buy something!” he said loudly.

“There’s no need to be coarse,” she replied loftily.

She did wait, but I left the store, so cannot report on their reunion.

AT times there seems to be more guides than tourists in Oxford. Some offer visits to colleges, others to take visitors where past romance cries out from every stone. The variety is amazing.

But no guide is more spectacular than Alasdair du Vail, whom I met outside the Oxfam shop in Broad Street, his tour’s starting point.

In Regency outfit, complete with brown topper, he looked every bit the refugee from a Jane Austen novel.

It’s hardly surprising that one of the tours he offers is called Tea and Tour with Mr d’Arcy.

Bachelor Alasdair, a 38-year-old Scot, started I Love Oxford tours a year ago. He has taught French and English since 1989 and speaks French, German, Japanese and Spanish, skills that come in handy with Continental and Far Eastern visitors. He has also forged a link with more than 40 businesses where his tour patrons can claim discounts and bargains.

There’s sharp commercial thinking behind that Regency costume.

I reckon I’ll abandon any thoughts of launching my own tour. The entrepreneurial standards are too challenging for this grammar school lad.

YOU couldn’t describe Ladies in Lavender, currently on at the Playhouse, as a tear jerker. But it certainly brought a lump to the throat of this old romantic.

Once I had got over the fact that one of the elderly spinsters in the play was Hayley Mills, who to many is forever that Oscar-winning child star, I realised what a fine performance she, Belinda Lang and the rest of the cast were giving us.

The play was delightful. Thank you for the autograph, Hayley, if I may call you such now that we’ve both grown up. You’ll always be Pollyanna to me.