WHAT’S with the dazzling shirt and tie and big camera? So asked Phil, one of the city’s resident alfresco dwellers when our paths crossed in St Aldate’s. “You look like a tourist.”

The choice of wardrobe had been carefully considered, I told him. The lilac shirt, red tie and light-coloured jacket and trousers were a challenge to the weather gods, who had recently been unreasonable, delivering first brilliant sunshine then torrential storms. Would they dare to rain on my parade? As for the camera, it was new and I was trying it out.

“A case of boys and their toys?” he suggested, a broad grin visible beneath his unruly bushy beard.

“What’s wrong with tourists?” I asked, a ploy to shift attention. But he saw through it.

“Nothing. Only the other day, one of them gave me these,” he said, producing from the bag that carried most of his worldly goods, a vivid pink polo sports shirt with turquoise motif – a garment that made mine pale into insignificance, and a pair of lurid green gloves. “All I need is the occasion to wear them – like a clown’s fancy dress contest. We could go together. Now, are you going to take my picture?”

How could I refuse?

PHIL was not the only one with tourists on his mind that morning. The elegant woman browsing in the charity shop said she loved Oxford but questioned how and why townsfolk tolerated them as patiently as they did.

“They are often rude and walk five or six abreast forcing you into the road, while others form long crocodiles through which it’s impossible to break through,” she said.

“But they do help the local economy, as well as add colour to the place,” I said, defending the phalanxes and columns of our friendly invaders. “And Oxford is too beautiful to keep to ourselves.”

She was not convinced and went on to highlight more of the tourists’ less-endearing behaviour.

Bearing in mind she was an American, holidaying in the city for a month, this seemed a bit rich.

HAD there been no tourists I would have been denied seeing half a dozen miniature would-be students of Hogwart’s School weaving through the crowds in Cornmarket Street.

They were French children, all about 10 years old and dressed in long gowns, some wearing witches’ hats and carrying wands – so familiar to devotees of Harry Potter films.

Their guide, again French, said that while they were here to improve their English, that day was a pilgrimage to some of their heroes’ film locations.

Somehow I felt Harry, Ron and Hermione were of greater interest than syntax and punctuation.

When I asked if they had been to Christ Church to see the great hall, which was the model for Hogwart’s dining room, I was showered with excited cries in French, and, in one case, a hint of Italian.

It was hardly clear and showed little of their progress in English, yet those bright young eyes convinced me this would be their next stop.