Imagine a three-year-old Harry Potter - but female and pink - and you have Amelia.

She was drawing pictures at the table where she, her parents, grandparents and a couple of youthful aunts were lunching in a village pub. There was one picture for each of the party.

Eventually she ran out of family and peered through white-rimmed spectacles for new customers. I was at the next table; would I like a picture?

Dismissing her parents' apologies, I accepted the offer with genuine pleasure.

Ten minutes later it was finished. There was the inevitable three-up-and-two-down house, a misshaped sun with spiky rays, two Lowry-esque matchstick people and a box-like, four-wheeled object.

"What a lovely car," I said enthusiastically - only to see Amelia's smile fade.

"It's not a car," she said indignantly, sounding more like Hermione Grainger than Harry Potter. "It's a Toyota 4X4." I thanked her - but the damage was done.

They had returned to the city where he had proposed and, two years on had spent their honeymoon. It was their 29th anniversary.

The proposal took place on that secluded path between Merton Street and Christ Church Meadow. It was a spring evening; there had been a brief yet heavy shower, she recalled. He had produced the ring and slipped it on to her finger.

We were on this path and I remarked that change was slow in that part of the city.

"It's all just the same, although we're carrying more weight than we did back then," she said, giving her husband's developing paunch a loving tap.

"Dead right they are," he said peevishly. "There was a puddle here last time - just like now. I got my trousers wet when I went down on one knee. I wouldn't do that again. The trousers were new, money was tight..."

I'll swear I saw Cupid return his arrow to his quiver and depart, tutting.

Perhaps reading the article on reincarnation was a mistake. But one car magazine is much like another and there's only so much Country Life you can take on an empty stomach. A hospital waiting room is not Blackwell's.

The piece about the departed returning in other life forms was going through what passes as a brain when I saw it - a young thrush.

It was standing on the pavement in Worcester Street. When I stopped, it looked up.

I wished it a good morning. Resuming my walk, to my surprise it was trotting alongside - if trotting is what thrushes do. After about five yards, I stopped. So did the bird. Another few yards and another stop, then another: each time the bird looked up.

"I'm going to the Playhouse in Beaumont Street," I informed the thrush, in spite of pitying looks from three children. "What about you?"

It gave a final stare, a loud tweet of farewell and flew into the grounds of Worcester College.

Since then I've been musing who, among those departed acquaintances, it might have been. It did resemble a sharp-nosed spinster teacher from my junior school days.

Tennis I can take or leave. Oxfordshire's own Tim Henman is another matter.

The Nearly Man of the British game has been a credit to his country since before Andrew Murray threw his first rattle out of the pram.

Now his retirement is pending, I'll miss the Tim skip and the less-than-ferocious clenching of the fist when he scores a winner. Thanks Tim.

The shame of it!

Normally the darned thing would be stowed and silent in the glove compartment. But as the car was undergoing its MOT test and I was waiting to hear the worst, that most detestable of instruments, the mobile phone, was in my pocket.

Of all places for it to ring - the Schools quad outside the Bodleian, where silence is not an option! Eyes burned with disapproval as it echoed loudly between those ancient walls.

I dashed for anonymity, but it was too late.

If only I'd installed a modest ring tone rather than the rousing Toreador song from Carmen.