It is accepted that since the terrible happenings of September 11, 2001, the New Yorker is a changed person; less bombastic, less arrogant - in short, less of a know-it-all. There are exceptions, of course, and I met a couple of them in Turl Street on Tuesday.

Oxford was a cold and windy place and tourists outnumbered the rest of us by some margin. A group of Italians - with city guide, his furled umbrella pointing skywards - having seen all that the windows of Walters of Oxford had to offer, moved towards Broad Street, leaving the two middle-aged women studying a small map.

"May I help?" said this knight in tarnished armour.

"We're heading for the Bodleian Library," said the taller of the two. "It's along here."

I confirmed they were going in the right direction, but a couple of twists and turns would be needed before they reached their goal.

"But that's it," she said, pointing with a much be-ringed digit at Exeter College.

My contradiction didn't go down too well, especially with the smaller woman who, for some unfathomable reason, managed to throw in the line that she lived overlooking Central Park while her friend had an apartment off Park Avenue.

"Well, that's what our map says," she affirmed.

I suggested the map was not as detailed as it might be, but resisted the temptation to ask if it had been compiled by the same chap who told George W Bush about the location of weapons of mass destruction.

"We'll check it out, anyway," chipped in her friend, dismissing me without further ceremony.

They moved off and I nipped into the Oxfam secondhand bookshop, from where I would watch their progress.

It was with some naughty satisfaction (of which I am not proud) that minutes later, they emerged, flustered and muttering to themselves.

They were probably complaining that someone had moved the Bodleian.

Shop and supermarket trolleys certainly get around. Parked unceremoniously at the junction of the Thames Path and the walkway into Osney Mead, and no more than 30 yards from the now-refurbished Osney Lock, was a smart, shiny little number from Curry's electrical appliance store, almost a mile away.

But why there? Surely parking spaces were a-plenty outside the store along Botley Road. If, on the other hand, the trolley had been abandoned by some car-less shopper, there was some distance to go to anywhere one might reasonably call home.

The greater part of Radcliffe Square was cordoned off and those pedestrian-only pavements into High Street beside St Mary the Virgin Church were closed after some poor soul fell from the tower. The police had a grisly job to do.

A plump, white-haired woman, a white plastic badge on her coat bearing her name and position in life, and clutching a sheaf of official-looking paper, emerged from the Old Schools Quadrangle. She demanded to know from a policeman why her route into the High was blocked.

"There has been a serious incident," he said.

"Is someone dead?" she asked coldly.

"Yes, unfortunately," he replied quietly and with genuine sensitivity.

"Well, it's very inconvenient," the woman said, churlishly before bustling off towards Brasenose Lane.

I can only think the cold morning had worked an adverse effect on her sense of compassion. Otherwise, Heaven help anyone who knows her.