One of the penalties of good health is that those who have cheery cheeks or lithesome limbs that allow them to bound up stairs or run for a bus, are never allowed to feel under the weather'.

Family, friends and acquaintances alike take any change as an affront, an attempt to malinger, a devious device to curry sympathy.

"I thought you were running the Sport Relief mile." These words, delivered by someone I had always considered a friend, thundered down the phone in a manner fashioned to generate guilt.

"I feel terrible," I replied. "Not an ounce of strength in the old frame."

"What's wrong with your voice? You sound as if you've been hitting the malt whisky," he continued, disregarding the explanation.

Aggrieved, I suggested the lack of vibrant tones might be a clue to a debilitating virus, or worse.

"Don't think you'll get out of sponsoring those of us who didn't lie in bed - just because the weather's lousy," he concluded, confirming an absence of sympathy and a presence of deep suspicion.

Turning to the family for a little TLC, I phoned my younger son. I should have known better.

"But you're never ill. You'll get over it," he said, quickly moving the conversation to the Six Nations' Rugby Championship.

I told them I was ill.' Isn't that the inscription on Spike Milligan's tombstone?

Only two foolhardy Canada geese and one duck were prepared to chance their feathers on Tuesday morning along the fast-moving Thames between Osney Lock and Folly Bridge - and even they stuck close to the south bank.

The waterlogged punts at Folly Bridge were tethered to a pontoon, as if thankful not to be at the mercy of the fast current, while the sole paddleboat, invisible feet operating the pedals that in turn rotated the water wheels, could also make no progress because of a stout rope.

Wild, but at the same time, peaceful. How different from the scene in St Aldate's.

Amid the hurly burly, first a taxi scared the living daylights out of a diminutive elderly woman as she attempted to the cross the road before the little green man' sanctioned such a manoeuvre. The driver's lengthy horn blasts seemed excessive.

Next a youthful-looking and lanky barrister, gown over his arm and wig in a see-though bag, dashed towards the Crown Court as if the hounds of the underworld were on his heels.

He crashed against helpless pedestrians. He had no time to return the pleasantries of a female colleague or help as she tugged a heavy, wheeled suitcase in the same direction.

Suddenly, from the police station garage came the unmistakable siren of the law in hot pursuit. Leaping into the traffic came a copper carrier, fitted with windshield protectors and bulging with officers. It sped to Carfax and beyond, leaving everyone to point and wonder.

"Off to a bank raid?" inquired a visitor from Missouri, who had stopped to ask the way to the Ashmolean where he and his daughter were to meet 30 fellow countrymen.

"Could be," I replied nonchalantly, inferring this happened all the time in our city that never sleeps. "Check tomorrow's Oxford Mail to find out."

It was a plugging' opportunity too good to miss.

When the young woman dashed out of the specialist sports footwear shop in Little Clarendon Street, wearing new and expensive-looking trainers, I wondered if those boys and girls in blue were needed there. A felon showing a clean pair of heels?

However, she merely circumnavigated the pillar that supports the overhanging upper floor, and returned inside. Not a score of yards covered.

She noticed my puzzled look, smiled in an embarrassed way and apologised unnecessarily.

It was, after all, more strenuous exercise than I had managed 48 hours earlier.

Card seen in an East Oxford newsagents' window: Free to good home - carpenters' tools and workbench. Excellent condition. No use to me - like my ex-husband. Ring XXXXXX.'