THE visitor from Delhi and his family might be forgiven for thinking I was a city guide. Standing outside Boswell’s, clad in navy blue blazer, grey trousers and wearing a crested tie (my Huddersfield Town supporters’ club creation, not a college one to which I am not entitled) while clutching a folded copy of the day’s Oxford Mail, I possibly looked the part.

“Please could you direct us to the Bodleian Library?” he asked.

A simple task, but whether it was my Yorkshire accent or finger pointing that caused confusion, I don’t know, so I felt obliged to accompany them down Broad Street.

We arrived unscathed in the Old Schools Quadrangle and he thanked me and tried to press a coin into my hand. I refused it.

“But people expect money in my country,” he said.

He and his sari-dressed wife looked confused as I thanked him for the offer before walking off.

What with recently being offered a seat on the bus by a young woman – refused on the grounds of vanity – last week being sent correspondence offering a five-day, free-of-charge stay at a nursing home for the elderly or confused, and now being mistaken for a tour guide, I could be facing a crisis of identity.

THE appearance of Christmas greetings in shops, before August had ended, made me determined not to buy any until the days were much shorter and the nights considerably colder.

The resolve was firm. But what about a calendar – my slimline Audrey Hepburn calendar, her beautiful features and unforgettable eyes, essential beside the kitchen noticeboard?

The stall in the Westgate Centre had calendars to suit every taste; but after a search, only one bearing pictures of the girl we young men of the 50s and 60s dreamed of taking home to mother could be found.

I walked away, stopped, and then returned to the stall, my resolve in pieces. After all I have to enter birthdays of friends and family, special days and events of 2013.

Well, that’s my story.

TODAY should have been the last day of a six-week return visit to Nepal and the Samata School in Kathmandu.

However, my GP advised against it and I agreed to postpone the trip until next year. (Another reason to get the Audrey H calendar and start the countdown?) I was discussing the disappointment with my daughter. Seven-year-old grandson George was listening. He had an unusually serious expression.

“If you’d gone when you should you wouldn’t have any more days left. Now you've got” – he did a swift calculation using fingers and heavenward glances – “42 days!” he said brightening.

What’s that about the mouths of babes and sucklings?