No offence meant

Some insults are obviously exactly that. If someone calls you a f***ing arsehole or a stupid cretin, then there's no way you can miscon-strue it. They're having a go at you.

But other insults are more subjective, aren't they? What one person sees as a hideous insult another will find entirely trivial and not worth remarking on. So much depends on how the words are interpreted.

People sometimes say I've insulted them when for the life of me I can't see where the insult lies. As far as I'm concerned, I respect them, I value them, I may even admire them. Yet they're convinced I've abused them in some way.

They'll take what I've said as a criticism of their religion, their work, their political views, their parenting skills, or whatever, and any attempt I make to put the record straight is simply ignored.

Personally, I'm fairly insult-proof. If someone says something that might possibly be an insult, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume a quite innocent meaning. They'd have to be blatantly rude for me to take offence.

Even if they're saying something clearly derogatory, often I can see it's because they've obviously misunderstood me or imagined something about me that's complete nonsense. So usually I just laugh or shrug my shoulders or take no notice. Why fly off the handle at some gormless misunderstanding?

But some people just seem to look for insults, they love the sheer drama of feeling insulted and fuming at someone. They'll see an insult in every other sentence - a sly dig here, a snide reference there, a sarcastic aside somewhere else. Everyone is getting at them, everyone is busy sharpening a knife to stab them in the back.

The fact is, I don't insult anyone out of the blue, for no good reason. They'd have to insult me first, and quite flagrantly, for me to respond in kind. Even then, I find it hard to be insulting. I always feel uncomfortable and mean, however justified my reaction, however hurt or crushed I may be.

All I can say is, like beauty, insults are often in the eye of the beholder.

Parental dreams

I wonder why so many parents find it so tough to accept their children for what they are? They so often have hopes and assump-tions quite unrelated to what their children actually want out of life. Or what they're really suited for.

They imagine a grand career in some profession their child has zero talent for. They expect a dull, routine lifestyle for a child who is clearly rebellious and quirky. They hear the patter of tiny feet when their child has no desire whatever for an infant.

I've known so many people who say their parents don't understand them, don't appreciate what motivates them, and constantly undermine their true aims and ambitions. In short, their parents are more of a hindrance than a help.

Is it so hard to see your children as they are and encourage them in their true inclinations rather than a load of parental daydreams?

When I was young my mother and father had endless preconceptions about what sort of person I was and what I should do with my life, and they always found the reality hard to adjust to.

In the few years that I worked for a local paper, they saw me as some high-flying journalist jetting around the globe reporting world-shattering events. But it wasn't what I was cut out for or interested in.

They assumed I would share their very orthodox political views, and were baffled and upset when my views got increasingly left-wing and iconoclastic.

They expected me to have children and grandchildren, and couldn't understand why I opted out.

In general they saw me as Mr Normal, following a predictable, conventional, conservative lifestyle, probably on some new-build suburban estate where everyone mowed the lawn on Sundays and changed their car every three years.

I think they were permanently shell-shocked by my turning into the exact opposite of their stifling stereotypes. They looked on in disbelief as I adopted one radical cause after another - homosexuality, feminism, socialism, vegetarianism, premarital sex and abstract art, to name but a few. They probably wondered if some hospital blunder had left them with someone else's baby. They certainly saw me as as some alien being from another planet.

It must be very heaven to have parents who truly appreciate you for what you are.