To the casual observer, Woodstock was closed. In its defence, the clock had still to record 30 minutes past nine; the morning was misty and cold, and there were few people about anxious to browse around the array of interesting shops.

Even the county museum had not unlocked its impressive doors to as yet unseen knowledge seekers.

Only the man in his lonely pay box at Blenheim Palace's back door' was ready for the crowds - if and when they might show up.

Such was the absence of action that I stood for several minutes watching a workman rubbing down the wood on a public bench, ready for a fresh coat of varnish.

This is not to say nothing was happening elsewhere in the town; appearances can be deceptive, as the family of three - father, mother and teenage son - were to prove.

Both males wore Australian bush hats - a couple of corks hung from the young man's headgear - while mother had a buff-coloured outfit that would not have been out of place in downtown Wagga Wagga.

The hats had been made and bought in Ireland - Mullingar in Westmeath to be precise - and the son had added the corks for effect. However, they had never been south of the Pyrenees.

According to the father, they were here for a wedding in the wilds of Oxfordshire', a description that bordered on both cheek and the ridiculous, coming as it did from someone from Westmeath, let alone Mullingar.

"We'll kill a bit of time and take a look at Churchill's grave," he told the other two. "It's better than standing around."

Being seen as a warm-up man might have amused the journalist in Winston Churchill, but would have done nothing for the ego of this statesman son of Blenheim.

Standing around was the last thing on the minds of a retired couple from Wootton. There was a garden to tend, plants to be bought and planted.

They were heading for Yarnton Nurseries - and in the absence of anything more pressing, I decided to do the same. It was time to smarten God's little acre for the summer ahead.

The volume of traffic in the car park was a clue to why Woodstock was so sparsely populated.

Not that everything was sweetness and light among the customers.

Frustrated grandparents, entertaining offspring during the holidays, were finding it difficult to select a cyclamen or brood over a begonia when youngsters wanted to head for the café or the fish and reptile section. One child affirmed that he wished he were back at school. His grandfather's pained expression seemed to concur with that sentiment.

Even those not handicapped by demanding children were finding the going hazardous.

A couple, not yet stricken in years, seemed inevitably to come to blows as they argued loudly over what plants should occupy which flower beds.

A brush doormat bearing the words: Our house is blessed with love and laughter' served as a backdrop to the tense scene.

It was therefore a delight to come across somebody at peace with himself, having made what might be a life-changing decision.

He was 21, tall and thin, with an amazing shock of hair, eyes shining enthusiastically and a smile capable of opening the tightest closed bud in the nursery.

That morning, he had handed in his notice to follow his dream and become a specialist carpenter.

He had weighed the pros and cons and had decided it was now or never. There was wood to be turned and fashioned at his Kidlington home and a host of ideas waiting to be unleashed.

The future was in his hands, as was his ability to convince others he was someone worth supporting.

His optimism made me forget falling property values, the rising cost of living and sport being surrendered to a political battlefield - or that I had gone to the garden centre to choose and buy plants. Ah well, as Scarlett O'Hara might have said, tomorrow is another day.