I was terribly embarrassed the other day on my way to work. I was on the bus, sitting next to this old guy, and when he got to his stop and started to get up, he said "Excuse me, please". The interesting thing was that he said it in English!

I was a bit taken aback by this, because the guy obviously wasn't an English speaker (his accent was pretty atrocious, if I may be unkind). So why did he speak to me in English? Uh-oh, he must have noticed I was reading a book in that language (of course I was reading! What do normal people do on buses?). And I say "uh-oh" because I was reading a romance, and I'd spent most of my trip reading a sex scene. The poor man must have got an eyeful!