I HAD been talking to our 13-year-old son about the best balm for chilblains, when an itch of sufficient intensity to have stirred a moan from a fibreglass Buddha erupted on the middle toe of my left foot – causing me to pause for an urgent scratch outside the sandstone wall guarding a perjink garden, where a winter bird was pecking at nuts in the tiny webbed bag left dangling from a pear tree.

And, in nearby houses, the little rock ponds, described as “water features” in those magazines that pander to the swimming-pool dreams and lakeside ambitions of suburbanites, were slowly thawing into sullen colours after the recent cold spell.

At this time, the parish priest, a comely chap with chuckling blue eyes and a figure that suggested a liking for marzipan dainties and fruit cake, was feverishly revving the modest engine on his car, as though his buttocks had just brushed the hobs of hell.

By hopping for several seconds on the pavement and leaning on the boy’s shoulder, I was able to bring relief to the tormented toe – as, a few yards away, the engine howled like a thunder-and-damnation evangelist in full throttle. With the itch at last satisfied, I slipped my gnarled foot back into its padded sock and seasonal boot, while the boy surveyed the scene, fervently hoping that nobody of his acquaintance had witnessed my discomfort. “I haven’t been so embarrassed since Charlotte spotted his hospital-grey string vest hanging on the washing-line,” he whispered to himself.

“What’s that?” she had asked on that brooding summer’s day. “A fishing net?”

Anyway, on resuming our full stride, I reached the driveway to the brick church at precisely the same shaving of a second as the rapidly accelerating priest.

“Oh, my God,” I said in alarm, before the holy man applied the brakes with estimable zest, screeching his car to a halt at the outer fluff of my right trouser – instead of the car park at the parish social club, where he had been booked as that afternoon’s bingo caller. The good man chose not to correct the understandable confusion about his identity, and drove off – without, I noted, the familiar chuckle in his eyes.

“Of course,” as I explained to my wife that afternoon over a Garibaldi biscuit and a restorative mug of tea, “we all want to be someone else from time to time, but you shouldn’t aim too high.”