HIS accent was as broad as the Texan Plains from which he came. Was he not flying home to Houston to share his new president’s Trumpian triumphant day, I asked with more than a hint of mischievous badinage?

Nope, said the 6ft 4in-tall Craig, a passable John Wayne lookalike, when we met outside the Old Schools Quad. Oxford would do fine for him on Friday. After all, he had paid for the trip and no-one in Texas encouraged wasting hard-earned cash. Nothing would happen that he couldn’t see on TV over here? The inauguration was “just Hollywood”.

He had not voted for Mr Trump but accepted the result. So had his wife Jan [corr], who was less tolerant of their new Commander-in-Chief. Yet Craig had some sympathy. Her thoughts were high treason.

“Let’s face it, he’s a loser,” said Craig. “If he does what he says, he’ll annoy half the world. If he doesn’t, he’ll anger the other half. The guy can’t win.”

With that he asked to be directed to the Pitt Rivers Museum. He heard they had some Redskin items.

* NINE-year-old Ethan, having a day’s sick leave and out with his grandparents, was busy checking cycles chained to the railings surrounding the Radcliffe Camera. My “good morning” was taken as interest.

“There are more than 30 different makes and I’m only halfway round,” he said. “I’ve written the names down.”

“Which make is the most popular?” I asked.

A quarter of an hour later I was still helping him decipher his notes. Serves me right.

* KEVIN is not known for his patience or his small talk, so when I found him alone in our favourite Covered Market café, I knew I’d have to lead any conversation.

“No Pat [his wife] today?” I asked brightly.

“She’s at her mother’s,” he replied gloomily..

“Everything okay?”

“As okay as it ever is.”

What seemed an eternal silence followed, broken only when he said he had come into Oxford on the park-and-ride from Pear Tree.

“The new purple buses look great,” I remarked with exaggerated enthusiasm.

“Do they? All I know is the b***** sunken grates and holes in the Woodstock Road bus lane are as bad as ever. I ache all over,” he said, exaggerating lower back pain. “They should save the paint and buy some filler.”

For once I restricted my hot chocolate intake to one cup. Come back soon, Pat.

* “IF I venture in the slipstream between the viaduct of your dreams...”

Romantic words from Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. Hardly the stuff for the side of a narrowboat moored in East Street. But there it was. My imagination ran riot.