DO you ever have one of those days? I don’t mean a run of the mill day when you come across a couple of things decidedly bizarre.

Rather, a day in which your whole world seems populated by characters from the theatre of the absurd. I met eight people in a single morning last week who ought to have an ASBO slapped on them.

It was like this… A brilliantly sunny day, so I walked into Eastbourne for the bus up the Downs to Friston Pond - a dreamy little stretch of water mentioned in the Domesday Book.

At the bus stop, an old man and his old wife were shouting and swearing at each other. I don’t know what it was about, but it was serious enough for him to threaten to take himself off to Hastings and she could go to f*****g Brighton if she wanted.

I suppose this might be classed as a tiff or an altercation, but it was nothing compared with the next episode of geriatric bovver. This even older man was screaming and threatening violence against his even older wife who was frail and sad. I felt so sorry for her that I was on the point of butting in. Then I remembered my dad’s cautionary tale from his RAF days during WWII when he interposed himself between a thuggish man and his young wife – only to receive a vicious hand-bagging from the lady herself.

When I got off the bus, I was accosted by the local weirdo who told me I’d got a nice tan, before offering to be my guide. He reminded me of any one of the “strange men” we were told to keep away from as kids. There is a glorious walk from Friston Pond through a buttercup meadow – gambolling rabbits and a chorus of songbirds – down to East Dean to The Tiger pub. Ancient village with stone houses. Predictable pretentiousness on the front wall of the local HQ of The National Trust: they have, with aching tweeness, put up a blue plaque which bears the conceit that Sherlock Holmes retired here. A blue plaque for a fictional character is like buying a pint for the man who never was.

Anyhow, I got my drink, ordered lunch and went to sit in the garden. Here comes the next character for an ASBO. He was about two and shouted “Yah!” At five seconds intervals for twenty minutes, with the volume of the ship’s siren. His modern parents – as modern parents do – thought this was hugely entertaining and gleefully egged him on. Then there arrived a whole congregation of ASBOs to sit at the next table: a posh-vulgar dowager sort, her son, daughter-in-law and fourteen year old granddaughter who was permanently embarrassed by the comments of her terrifically pseud gran. The old girl was out to impress her pedigree on the whole clientele of The Tiger. She talked loudly about the large house she lived in. Except she didn’t call it a house; she called it a hice. Then, in her lah-di-dah, she told the young girl that she liked her shoes. “Do you call them trainers?” Well they weren’t rugby boots.

The waitress plonked a plate of something in front of the dowager fraud who bawled, “Oh lavvly! A pint of prawns. That should shut me up!” But it didn’t of course. We weren’t far from Beachy Head. I conjectured briefly how long I would get if I picked the old girl up and chucked her off.

But there was solace in the fish and chips.