PARENTHOOD brings changes – not all of them to do with trying to balance the now tighter family budget after endless, sleepless nights. The whole mindset is likely to face an overhaul.

Take Philip, a chap who came up to Oxford to study at Exeter College more than a dozen years ago. He liked the city so much that he stayed on, was fortunate to find work in his specialist field on one of the business parks, married his college sweetheart and settled down – after a fashion.

He was still up for dodging the police and plunging into the Thames on May Morning as in student days; he played rugby with the mindless ferocity of a raging buffalo, and rock-climbed the sheerest faces with the ease of a Barbary ape. Meeting him was always delightful if mentally exhausting.

All this changed at Easter this year when Philip MkII appeared.

Caution appeared on his CV.

I saw him on Tuesday with his wife and junior in British racing green hi-tech pushchair making their way down Windmill Road in Headington.

After the expected – and fully justified – admiration of the offspring, I asked if they were up for attending a highly professional medieval tournament enactment five miles from Banbury. I showed him some publicity material.

“Witness the power of the English longbow and the ferocity of a medieval arrow storm.

“Feel the ground shake with the thunder of horses’ hooves and a cavalry attack.

“Watch lances shatter on hardened steel...”

His Adam’s apple looped the loop. “What does Health and Safety say about it?” he asked, his brow furrowed like a recently ploughed field.

This from a man who chided me for not accepting the offer of a bungee jump for my 65th birthday.

It isn’t every day you find someone in a sleeping bag in Bonn Square at midday. It is even more rare to see a chain-adorned Lord Mayor of Oxford filling that role – and the sleeping bag.

But this year’s incumbent Mary Clarkson was doing her bit to publicise the Oxford Night Shelter Sleep-Out on November 14.

Oxford Mail photographer Tony Moore can be quite persuasive when the occasion demands.

There seemed to be a determined effort by organisers to sign her up for the real thing in St Clement’s Churchyard, but I reckon the Lord Mayor has done her bit for the cause.

Perhaps her diary is not yet filled for that day, but if she isn’t, it would be an act of compassion on someone’s part to invite her to something where she wouldn’t have to wear three overcoats – and that chain as well.