AAI is properly raging. She read the last post and the profanities were just too much to bear. “I was angry.” I reasoned. “It was a totally justifiable rant when I”m on a one-woman-mission to encourage recycling, only to be thwarted at every turn.” “I still feel it’s excessive”, she sniffed. “Language of the gutter. You never know who’s reading this blog, and if they recognise us we’ll be disgraced.” She warmed to her theme. “Your Auntie Ethel came across a man one day, who was rude to her in the Post Office. And she said, I recall it to this day, “I don’t know who he was, but I thought he was very ill-bred”. Imagine if people said that about you! Letting us all down a bucketful.”
The Wise Old Elf looks up from his Bernard Cornwell. He doesn’t normally comment on the blog because he’s embarrassed by me, but he caught sight of the post while checking his e-mails. “Yes, I would temper that language. No need for it: does you a disservice in fact.” He shakes his head, looking genuinely saddened at my descent into vulgarity. “Devalues your argument in fact,” he concludes, determined to hit me where it hurts. “But,” I protest. “I try to be a helpful person. Plenty of those pious ones might look at me askance for swearing, but I don’t see them bin-hoking for Coke cans.” (In a recent display of greenness I set about fishing cardboard boxes, food cans and plastic bottles out of neighbouring black bins and transferring them to the blue one. No wonder my house rarely gets cleaned). “They’re content enough to burn wood pellets in an empty barn to be sure, but you wouldn’t catch them dropping the F-Bomb.”
“Hmmmm,” says herself, not in the least appeased and resolutely unswayed by my argument. So no daughter of the year award for me then, alas.
*Wise Old Elf, so called because of his likeness to the character in a well-known children’s programme.
