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I think there is a difference.

First, you hold a cigarette between two fingers, you are still able to grip the steering wheel or the gearstick every time you need to using your other fingers, your palm and your thumb. Your hand isn't "full" in the way that it is when you are holding a mobile phone.

Second, although you do lift your hand to your face to take a drag, this is only for two seconds at a time and you can choose when to do it. You don't, for instance, start taking a drag *as* you pull out of an intersection, or at the precise moment you need to change gear. Whereas if you come up to a roundabout mid-conversation, very few people will stop their conversations. I've seen so many drivers trying to wedge the phone between shoulder and ear while needing one hand to steer and the other to change gear. It doesn't tend to end well.

Nothing, however, is going to beat the person I saw a couple of years ago on the A14 who had an open book of crosswords propped open on the wheel and a pen in her hand. Admittedly the A14 is a hideously boring road, but seriously!

With me, it's always the right room for an argument.

Although I did have this master plan that I wasn't going to do that with the business persona. Oops.

Familiar with Christian beliefs? Certainly. Regard them as universally applicable self-evidential truth and wisdom? Not for five minutes. The wisdom of a tribesman a couple of thousand years ago may very well still be relevant in a global community today, but I can't take it as a given.

I'm also sceptical about the idea that there was a time when the country had a heart and people taught morals and manners. Any amount of abuse went on - kids working in mines, never mind inhaling cigarette smoke, physical violence being an expected element of any family relationship, you name it, it was going on. We just didn't talk about it - or in many cases, even consider that it was anything worth talking about.

I agree entirely with your standpoint of "it shouldn't be enforced because decent human beings should be doing it anyway", just not with the arguments used to justify it.

This is pretty much what my best friend has been doing with his little boy - he can do anything he likes on the computer, has full control of mouse and keyboard, but must be sitting on an adult's lap. There have been one or two last-minute saves on YouTube where a chain of "related videos" links have gone from kids cartoons to something disturbing.

Hey, that's great news! Well done!

Hate it.

I mean I understand the compulsion to never turn down a freebie, but if they'd given you a free bar of soap you wouldn't have put that in your mouth, why do it with Marmite?

Ah, the march of technology.

I went into Boots today with a little USB stick to print off some photos at their touch-screen terminals.

Ten years ago I would have still been astonished that I could walk into a shop with portable memory the size of a keyring, and without even needing to use a keyboard or a mouse, I could specify half a dozen pictures and print them out to my chosen size and finish within five minutes.

Today I felt sweary at it because the !!!!ing touchscreen was so poorly calibrated and it took a whole five minutes to select and print my pics.

You're right Clive, I have a thing about being rude to people and I need to remember that (1) even at my snarkiest I won't be the worst a---hole they've dealt with that day, and (2) even if I was they're expecting it and are paid to deal with it.

I try and do the assertiveness stuff - just repeating and repeating "I said I am not interested and I do not want to continue this conversation" - usually that works just fine but this time it ended up evolving to "which part of this do you not understand?!?" which as you know is pretty unusual for someone like me!


Pfft!

I think the first bit of what irks me is whether there's already a transaction happening. If I order a burger and the server asks me if I'd like fries with that... well, I've already got my purse out and I'm ready to hand over some money. Whereas if I've just phoned to update the contact details on my account, it's not very cricket to suddenly steer the conversation round to an unplanned purchase.

The second part is about time and mental energy. If I've gone to get my lunch and I'm expecting it to take, say, ten minutes of my time and give me a mental break, that won't be drastically changed by the fact that they offer me fries as well as my burger. I won't find myself perplexed as I try to mentally calculate the benefits of fries. Even if I decide I would like the fries, it won't take any extra time out of my day. Whereas these guys want to spend ten minutes explaining the product while I try to retain as much of the unexpected and hastily jabbered information overload as possible. Brain ache! Don't need it!

The third part is that if I say to the burger-joint employee "no thank you, no fries today" he won't get in my face about it and start demanding the details of my finances/marketing plan/living arrangements/dietary requirements or asking me whether I really think I'll survive without fries.

I am over-thinking this.

Hurrah!

Hoping to emulate your success in a couple of months