So there I am, working away in a garden. I've already been told that the owner is away for the day, and that his 12 year old son has been charged with making me a cup of tea when he gets in from school. Immediate mental response - oh, no. I really don't like talking to children - I can feel them thinking, "Who is this weirdo?" And then I feel sorry for them because I can sense how much they want to be somewhere else. And then I start worrying about it. And then I get distracted, and then I lose the thread of the conversation, and then I seem like even more of a weirdo, and so on.

Anyway. He comes home from school, very politely asks me how I'm getting on and would I like tea?, I say yes please, and off he goes. He reappears fifteen minutes later, bless him, with a tray containing a mug of black tea, a small jug of milk, a bowl of sugar with two spoons - and three beautifully arranged miniature squares of chocolate.

AAAAARGH!!! Does anybody else have trouble with this, I wonder? What's considered the polite thing to do? If I eat just one, does that look as though I just ate it to show willing, and didn't really want them? If I scoff the lot, will that be considered greedy? If I eat two, then that'll leave one sad little square of chocolate on the tray - will that look petty? Or should I just leave them all? No, because then he'll wonder what he did wrong. Won't he?

In the end I eat them all, sharing the white one with their suddenly very attentive Weimaraner. She likes me - she always greets me with grins and wriggling, and while I'm working she'll suddenly appear at my side with lots of kisses, just because she can. I wish people were so straightforward. I know where I am with a dog.

I sometimes wish I'd been born in Edwardian times. OK, it was a bit stifling, but at least they had all those lovely rules on etiquette - if you didn't know what to do you could look it up in a book...