It’s funny, isn’t it? In a world where only grand, extravagantly publicised gestures of kindness seem worthy of celebration, something as simple as ‘acknowledging’ another individual can produce such profound consequences...

Last Wednesday, for instance, I caught an early bus into town. It was pitch black, cold and wet.

I like to travel into work before dawn so I can sit up top, at the front, and enjoy this childish frisson before everyone’s bedside alarm chimes 7am and the spell gets broken.

On this particular morning, however, even the thrill of double-decker surfing failed to raise my spirits.

For no particular reason, professional, personal and petulant fears of the self-indulgent variety were running riot, leaving me stone-faced and dead enough to stare contentedly out at a misted-up window.

Yet at the next stop, a man in his 40s boarded, sat down and produced a tissue, proceeding to clear a large hole on his side of the window.

Remaining deliberately icy, I even pretended I hadn’t noticed his spring-cleaning until, pausing to glance at me, he leant over and said: “Would you like to see out too?”

From zero to hero, my spirits spiked and what had seconds before looked grim and grey suddenly drowned in colour.

“Oh my god, thank you,” I said, as my view in front transformed from municipal glum into a kaleidoscope of headlights and street lamps.

He smiled, nervously, sat back down and that was it. But if I hadn’t been so sure he’d have hated the attention, I would have stood, delivered a speech about ‘the kindness of strangers’ and presented him with a hug and miniature bottle of Champagne (I’m not paid until today...).

In fact, from that point on – 6.43am – the rest of Wednesday, a sodden, miserable mess if you remember, proved something of a revelation.

So moved was I by his kind-hearted gesture that by the time I arrived at St Giles, my faith in the basic goodness of people had undergone a 180-degree turnaround.

And (I can’t believe I’m about to write this), that old adage about smiling and the world smiling with you....? Well (and I apologise unreservedly to all those who rightly detest the slightest whiff of saccharine sentiment)... it works.

There, I’ve said it.

I was positively beaming as I wandered along Botley Road toward Osney Mead industrial estate, that charming quarter of Oxford enterprise, and while I’m certain most people only smiled back out of fear (“smile and keep walking, smile and keep walking”), I like to think it gave maybe one or two pause for thought.

For my money, this has become one of the highlights of my year.

I’m just grateful it didn’t happen nearer Christmas or I WOULD have stood up, grabbed the startled passenger to my bosom, and doubtless spent the rest of the holidays observing a curfew...