Please, thank you, so sorry.

Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves) has a new book out called Talk To The Hand, which is all about people having no manners anymore.

When I was a kid you had to be polite to everyone older than you, and nice to everyone younger than you, or else. You even had to be polite to really horrible older people, because the grownups were so busy climbing social ladders that they didn’t know who the really horrible ones were. But we kids knew. And we still had to be polite to them.

Maybe manners do maketh the man, but I’m confused. I just had my pin number filched by a very polite and neatly dressed criminal at the ATM. This is ridiculous, because I’ve been around long enough to know about these things. The thing is, while I was acutely aware somewhere in my consciousness that this impeccably mannered person was hoodwinking me, I was too busy being polite to assert myself by kicking him in the nuts. Years of conditioning has overridden my base instincts and rendered me incapable of self-defence? This is not good.
The lady at the bank rudely rolled her eyeballs at me as if to say, “You idiot,” when I told her my story and begged her to change my pin. I was polite and apologised for inconveniencing her, of course.

I would so like to have tea with Lynne Truss. We could duel politely with our little silver filigreed cake forks, and argue good-naturedly about whether to keep or lose the apostrophe forever.

And I could ask her (politely) why she keeps writing all the books I was going to write.