It would have been ungallant not to offer best wishes. After all, a less-than-discreet disc was hanging from her fashionable belt, announcing that today was her birthday and that she was sweet sixteen.

"Thank you," she said, smiling broadly and wide-eyed, while playfully swinging her in-vogue handbag in one hand and clutching her essential mobile phone in the other.

"I'm meeting friends and we're going to Primark for a monster spend."

When the traffic stopped, she skipped over the crossing outside the Covered Market in High Street and headed for the Westgate Centre.

Less speedy was the small woman crossing beside me at a sedate pace.

She was carefully groomed, with rich silver hair, gently permed, all combining to revive memories of my grandmother who died half a century ago.

"It was my birthday yesterday," she volunteered.

Fear gripped. Would I be invited to guess her age? Think 70 and knock off 10 years - that would be safest.

However, this was avoided by her announcing she was 96. She could have passed for at least 25 years younger.

After congratulating her, I mischievously asked if she too was heading for Primark for a monster spend' in the young misses' section.

"No - I usually go to Debenham's. They cater more for my age group. I'll be getting some new clothes to take to America," she said.

She saw my expression. Ninety-six, perhaps, but flying to America . . .

"I'm going to see my daughter. It's my second trip this year," she explained.

I said she must be delighted to be healthy enough to make such trips. This caused her broad smile to fade. Suddenly she looked much older.

"I hope this is the last time," she said, a tear rolling down her cheek once she gathered her emotions and could speak.

"I hope my days are running out. It is no pleasure living alone and having to cross the world to see my family."

A minute later, she said goodbye and wandered off into the crowd.

I hadn't felt it prudent to ask why she seemed to do all the travelling or why she couldn't spend the rest of her days with her daughter in America. The answer might have been too painful to give.

__________ What is 200 yards long, has six fast food outlets, five mobile phone stores and isn't wide enough for a decent game of football?

The question came from Eric, one of the city centre's regulars.

He was wearing his atrocious trews, fashioned in what he calls the MacFisheries plaid; there was a couple of days' growth of beard and he spoke in that pseudo-Scottish accent that he adopted (along with the trews and stubble) when some fool told him he looked like Sean Connery a decade ago.

Only Eric, 5ft 4in tall and born in Botley 64 years ago, would have taken the comment seriously.

I gave up without a struggle.

"It's Cornmarket Street - where we're stand now," he said, waving his arms in all directions like a latter-day prophet.

He was displaying rare seriousness.

"And they talk about Cowley Road losing its identity! Oxford city centre lost all its character long ago," he complained.

I felt obliged to remark that as long as he was alive, this was not the case.

__________ She was straight from the Betjeman poem - tall and elegant with shoulder-length golden locks, black stockinged legs under navy blue serge, riding a front basket-bearing bicycle down Market Street.

Myfanwy was alive and well and living in Oxford.

She dismounted gracefully, swept back her hair and was fixing the essential security chain, when the cycle slipped, spilling the basket's contents on to the pavement.

"S**t!" she profaned, loud enough to awaken the old poet from his Cornish grave.

Another dream shattered.

_______ Parked outside The King's Centre, the Oxford's Mail's vibrant, happy-clappy community church neighbour in Osney Mead, were a couple of vans bearing the legend The Money Centre.

Was this the embodiment of God and Mammon?