IT was going to be a nice and easy Sunday morning…

We’d gone to Cambridge to visit offspring number three. His sister had come up from London for the weekend and we’d decided to drive the 13 miles or so to Ely where my wife and I had enjoyed a carefree boating holiday in 1989 BC (before children).

The plan was to have a stress-free mooch round the town and then have something to eat in a pub overlooking the river.

Driving along the A10, I spotted something moving on the grass verge up ahead. “Look, a fox,” I shouted. But as we passed, we saw it was a little deer, just sitting there, looking all forlorn.

Unanimously, we decided that we had to turn back to see if it was OK. It wasn’t. It had clearly been hit by a car and couldn’t stand, squealing pitifully as it tried to run away.

There was a danger it might have edged onto the road and been hit by one of the hundreds of cars that failed to stop, so the four of us formed a human barrier. It was unbearably stressful and, whenever it moved, I confess to panicking more than Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army.

As is usually the case in a crisis, it was left to my wife to take control. She took off her nice, warm, rather expensive coat, draped it over the trembling deer, and knelt by its side on the wet grass. She proceeded to reassure it with the kind of soothing words she uses when our baby grand-daughter starts to cry. Mercifully, the creature gradually became calm and its terrible pleading stopped.

My daughter, in the meantime, had also used her initiative by phoning the RSPCA who explained that the nearest officer was in Peterborough and it would take at least an hour for her to get to us.

With my wife continuing to be heroic, I felt the urge to be gallant in some way. “I’ll go and get us some coffees,” I announced.

I was gone maybe 40 minutes, searching for a roadside café, and had just been served when my daughter rang to say a policeman had stopped and was going to wait with the poor little deer until the RSPCA arrived. He’d said we were OK to get on our way.

I returned to pick up my family, and we left the stricken deer in the care of a police officer who’d opted to keep warm in his patrol car.

“What about your coat?” I asked my wife.

“I couldn’t take it off the deer – it was too warm and settled,” she replied. “Anyway, I could probably do with a new one.”

We headed on to Ely, feeling deflated, and had our bite to eat overlooking the river. When we passed the grass verge on the way back, my heart sank - there was no sign of the coat. The deer and police car had gone too.

We still don’t know the fate of the deer. We’ve tried to convince ourselves that it’s being nursed back to health, even though it’s more likely that it was beyond repair.

We don’t know the fate of the coat either. I’ve tried to convince myself that it’ll be posted on to us, even though it’s more likely to be hanging in a charity shop.

My wife’s on the hunt for a new one. I fear it’s going to be a deer do.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

THANK you to Newton Aycliffe Women’s Institute for making me feel so welcome and particularly the grandma who preferred not to be named but told me about Brodie, aged 9.

The little girl was sitting in the back of her mum and dad’s car approaching Darlington and the vehicle hit some rumble strips.

“Mum, Dad, I know what that noise is for,” she shouted. “It’s so blind drivers know they’re coming up to a roundabout.”

LOVED this one from The Northern Echo’s sports editor Nick Loughlin.

He asked his daughter Hannah, 10, if she’d received any Valentine’s cards.

“No,” came the reply.

“What not even one off Tom?” asked Nick. (Tom is Hannah’s boyfriend in her class.)

“No, we said we weren’t doing cards this year,” she said.

PETER Richardson, of Guisborough, is a good grandad. He’d made grandson Archie chicken dinosaurs and chips and the little lad announced that he was full and lifted his shirt to show off his tummy.

“Look, Grandad, it's really big like yours!” announced Archie.