I’m not a violent person. I’m really not.

However, when during the course of conversation someone holds their hands up in the air and makes some sort of symmetrical bunny gestures with their fingers to indicate quotation marks, I do want to punch them.

I absolutely recognise that this level of provocation is disproportionate to the violent response I imagine. I understand this, I do.

And it is an anomaly that I can brush away vastly more antagonistic invectives with serene aplomb.

Someone screaming insults in my face for instance, you would’ve thought far more likely to engender fury or anger.

But no. Not a bit of it. Oh do calm down dear. Drink some tea.

It is the slight, seemingly innocuous comments, the throwaways if you will, rather than the grand attack that will illicit the desire to rain blows upon my fellow man.

I just need to qualify what I’m going to tell you by saying I know it’s not rational.

So before you condemn me, which I know you must, I do truly appreciate that these triggers are not deserving of the ultraviolence I would like to execute on the offender.

Would you like a cup of tea Anthony? Yes, please.

Sugar? No, thanks.

You’re sweet enough as you are then!

A perfectly polite and pleasant exchange.

But it’s the bit at the end that gets me. Gets me every time.

This colloquial and well-known pleasantry makes me want to reach for the baseball bat and set about the perpetrator with gusto. It’s not right. But it’s how it is.

And here’s a phrase, a phrase that precedes the imparting of information, which means that before they’ve even told me anything the desire to land repeated blows upon the person comes welling up.

“I’m not being funny or nothing mate but....”

There is, in fairness, a truth in this phrase because in my experience at least, it means that they invariably do not go on to say anything remotely funny.

What follows is something judgemental, extremely irritating and rude.

Pass the baseball bat please.

Those who tell me about “blue sky thinking”, the need to “square the circle”, or get our “ducks in a row” all suffer the same imaginary carnage.

There is hope. Although not in the same league as the physical violence, I am chilled by the swathe of: “Do you know what I meaners.”

The continuous drip, drip, drip of incessant rhetorical meaninglessness.

My wife was a serial “Do you know what I meaner.”

Whilst courting her, obviously I tolerated this with a smile.

After marriage I told her she could assume that at all times, in whatever context, in whatever situation, wherever we were and at any time I knew what she meant.

And if I didn’t I would ask her: “What do you mean?”.

It stopped overnight. The icy chill which replaced it was certainly different but I like to think it saved our marriage even if it was only a week old.

Know what I mean?