The large, red, capital letter E was strapped to a bicycle leaning against the wall near Botley Road rail bridge. Feet away, a young woman, camera at the ready, was focusing into the mid-morning traffic. She saw me eyeing the solidly constructed vowel.

"Yours?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, offering no further explanation until my quizzical look demanded it.

"It's for an art degree project. E is for enough' - in this case enough traffic."

Other photographs had been taken, featuring this and other letters of the alphabet, at Didcot Power Station, a supermarket and a branch of a nationwide catalogue store.

"Why these?"

"Because I don't like them."

An honest answer - her prejudices harnessed to good use in her quest for honours to add to her history and politics degree.

She untied the letter and, dodging the traffic she so disliked, positioned it on the opposite side of the road, in a way that will hopefully bring artistic success.

Congratulations to the City of Oxford's Shopmobility scheme on clocking up 10 years - or rather to manager Robin Brooks and his merry band for making it a widely envied service. The Lord Mayor, Jim Campbell, flanked by colleagues David Rundle, Richard Huzzey and Sid Phelps, turned up for the celebrations at Shopmobility HQ, on the orlop deck, deep in Westgate Centre.

He proposed a toast and sliced the celebration cake before cutting a measured dash through the mall on one of the red machines, his chain of office jangling like Santa's bells.

A nice touch was Robin's decision to give tombola profits to Guide Dogs for the Disabled.

"The city council looks after us very well, so why not?" he said.

Grumpy Women were on stage at the New Theatre on Monday. If promoters want a similar evening with replacements for Annettee Badland, Rhona Cameron and Jenny clair, I can recommend a trio, seen earlier that day. The first was a diminutive grandmother, barely five feet tall, who dragged her tiny granddaughter across busy Queen Street, to catch a bus. It could have been the last - for both of them.

They ran in front of the slowly moving vehicle. The woman was so small and below the driver's line of vision that he saw the pair only at the last second, missing by inches as he hit the brakes.

The woman hammered on the bodywork. The driver opened the door, to be met by a torrent of abuse as they bundled aboard - instead of an apology for her stupidity.

The second woman, possibly in her early 50s, was so intent on staring into the face of her companion while complaining about a shop assistant, that she walked into a correctly parked cycle in St Giles, tearing her stocking.

She kicked the cycle angrily. Silly woman!

The third - probably the same age - declared loudly to Cornmarket Street in words averaging four letters, that she had no intention of spending money at Christmas on her family because they were capable of buying their own - that included her nine-year-old grandson.

What was more, if she heard another busker playing another carol, she wouldn't be responsible for her actions.

Come to think of it, with people like these, who needs to pay to see Grumpy Women?