Liadnan

I'm a polite and courteous person. No, really, I am. Admittedly, I am sometimes obliged to be professionally rude, it's kind of in the job description. And in certain discussion forums (don't even think about it, latinisers) I can, perhaps, be acerbic, short, or downright offensive. But, most of the time, I'm a gentle soul. I open doors and stand aside for the elderly and the burdened, I'm pleasant to people in shops, and I even limit gratuitous rudeness towards Martin as much as I possibly can.

So, when I'm reigning in the blind rage towards all humanity I find inevitable when in central London shortly before Christmas, and some cretinous woman tries to shove her way onto a crowded tube train the instant the door opens at TCR, only to become somewhat discombobulated when I (and others) fight our way off against the tide, I take some exception to being called "very rude". If I'd taken a meat cleaver to the woman there isn't a jury in the land that would have convicted me. Well, not a London jury anyway.

In other news, we're all doomed

Perhaps a metaphor will make an appropriate finish for this little essay. Imagine that you're on an ocean liner that's headed straight for a well marked shoal of rocks. Half the crew is dead drunk, and the other half has already responded to your attempts to alert them by telling you that you obviously don't know the first thing about navigation, and everything will be all right. At a certain point, you know, the ship will be so close to the rocks that its momentum will carry it onto them no matter what evasive actions the helmsman tries to make. You're not sure, but it looks as though that point is already well past.

What do you do? You can keep on pounding on the door to the bridge, trying to convince the crew of the approaching danger. You can join the prayer group down in the galley; they're convinced that if they pray fervently enough, God will save them from shipwreck. You can decide that everyone's doomed and go get roaring drunk. Or you can go around quietly to the other passengers, and encourage those people who have noticed the situation (or are willing to notice it) to break out the life jackets, assemble near the lifeboats, take care of people who need help, and otherwise deal with the approaching wreck in a way that will salvage as much as possible.

(serious comments welcome).

I have to say my response to the coming ecological-economic crisis tends towards his third option. But then, for one thing, I'm notoriously facetious and irresponsible, and for another I have no intention of becoming a parent.

I close by noting that Dead Ringers has always been a bit hit and miss, and in particular someone ought to tell Culshaw that winding-up members of the public is a joke with limited merit -by and large they'll do what anyone sensible does when faced with someone they assume is a random nutter- nevertheless, they've always been able to find one or two genius sketches an episode (more in the radio days, particularly when Lord of the Rings was first coming out on film) and I'm utterly transfixed by the notion of a Hollywood remake of Up Pompeii starring Russell Crowe as Lurcio.

I'm also slightly shérred, but let that pass. If you don't know, say it out loud and go watch Withnail.