Defending the indefensible

I lashed two pens together to write my 500 lines: “I must not swear in the corridor.” I accepted my punishment, for I had indeed been swearing loudly and repeatedly. My school wasn’t “flipping” Grange Hill. The British are superficially a polite people, renowned the world over for apologising for things that they didn’t do nor were responsible for. But this is a mere veneer, for underlying our “Terribly sorry” we are sarcastic and rude and, from Shetland to Land’s End, given …