If you think about it - it's not really surprising; in the big scheme of things humans have only just swung down from the trees. It's no wonder we're having trouble growing up into a sensible global civilisation. One of our problems is that we don't learn fast enough. A warthog hits the savannah at birth and very quickly learns how to avoid lions - or doesn't get to pass on the genes. By comparison humans are useless when they are born. I'm not saying that warthogs should be the dominant species, but humans could do with steepening their learning curve.

Have you ever seen the TV programme "Grumpy Old Men"? I could be in it.

Compelled to watch early evening television this evening by virtue of the fact that I was in the same room, I found myself grumbling about everything on it.

Why do advertisers insult their audience by portraying men as stupid while their wives are in possession of some secret wisdom communicated between each other with a savvy wink?

Why is a news programme encouraging the use of plastic bags in supermarkets by running an item on how to open them?

Then there is the laceration of the language taking place everywhere on every level; from split infinitives (a bit picky, I know), to the non-sensical application of the word 'like'. "I was like, it was like, she was like, I'm like, and all that kind of thing and stuff". Do you, like, see what I mean?

I suppose I am becoming a little intolerant; that and the world is changing around me in ways which I don't appear to be keeping up with. At the dinner table most evenings the teenagers have to explain to me something which has been said because they will routinely take a perfectly good word and assign to it an alternative meaning. How about this? - "I ship you guys" means "I think you would be good together" - from the word 'relationship'.

It goes something like (note correct usage of the word 'like'):

Teenager says something. I say "What are you talking about? That is gibberish". Teenager explains to me that the thought he has articulated does, in fact, make sense when expressed using conventional English. Ye Gods! what is the point?

I suppose the point is that the young people want to be independent of the old farts. They want to write their own rules and do it their way. The perennial irony is that despite knowing everything, they don't actually know anything at all. I was the same when I was young. I am full of experience and wisdom now. I just don't understand why the young people aren't hanging on my every utterance - I have so much to tell them. Of course therein lies the problem: You don't know how much you don't know until you know enough to realise how much more there is to know.