IT was inevitable. Sooner or later someone would offer me their seat on a crowded bus, just as the supermarket check-out girl had eventually asked if I needed help with packing four cream scones and a can of rice pudding.

It happened on the bus from the village to Banbury. I was last aboard and happy to ‘strap hang’.

After all, this was kids’ stuff for a chap who has clung to the pole of a San Francisco late-night cable car as it hurtled down seemingly vertical hills towards the bay.

But stand up she did – a young woman, probably in her early 30s, smiling beautifully.

I glanced around to see if she was making her sacrifice for some aged person. There was no one else.

The shock was immediate. I was now a senior citizen – visibly as well as officially.

I almost lost grip of the strap which would have pitched me on to the knee of a nursing mother and her baby.

However, to deprive a female of any age of a seat would have resurrected my long-dead grandfather to haunt me for my caddish behaviour.

I gracefully declined her offer and explained about grandad. She smiled, saw my reasoning and sat down once more. What a kind young lady! But I am left with the nagging feeling that her gesture had as much to do with shaming the five teenage school children who made no attempt to detach themselves from their their mobiles and give up their seats.

THE expression ‘every little helps’ is often overused, but when it comes to repairing and restoring an ailing church roof, never was it more true.

Therefore the £250 recommended by Lewis Pancott, manager of Sainsbury’s Westgate store and handed over by PR ambassador Christine Norburn this week to neighbouring New Road Baptist Church from the chain store’s Community Grant programme, was gratefully received.

That roof has had – and still has – its problems. The scheme, funded by Sainsbury’s ‘Bags for Life’, last year saw £135,000 handed out to various causes and projects. For a group of people that goes out to daily prove that it is better to give than to receive with its work for the community, it’s good to see this city centre church on the receiving end for once.

The half dozen young French visitors were on the quiz trail. “Please could you tell us where is your town hall?” asked the earnest looking girl with the colourful teeth brace. I happily escorted them the few yards to Carfax and pointed to the noble building in St Aldate’s. One of the boys spoke up.

“It looks more like a post office,” he said.

Some people have no taste.