The column that supplies everything offers a thought today on the subject of love. It is taken from a little book, The Stick Man’s Guide to Love, by the Oxford artist and writer Francis O’Neill. This handsome little volume — it would make an ideal Christmas stocking filler for that special person in your life — is a sequel to Francis’s earlier Stick Man book, which has sold more than 1,000 copies.

Does Francis speak with authority? Is he in love himself? I naturally ask him these questions when he makes a present of the book to me over coffee in The Punter pub, on Osney Island.

“I don’t like to tell people things like this,” he says, “but probably.” What doesn’t he know? you’re no doubt thinking. I thought that, too, but decided not to press it.

Priced at around £6, the book can be bought at various shops, including Sylvester in Little Clarendon Street, Indigo in Cowley Road, Waterperry Gardens and Red Opia in Oxford’s Covered Market. You can also find more about it, and about Francis’s other work, on his website, www.francisoneill.net