OK. I'll admit it. It was my fault. But I'd been in a really vile mood. It had been one of those days when everything went wrong. A big sale fell through at the last moment because the new salesman was rude to the customer. Three months work steering the guy to the crucial point and it was all wiped out in a second by a jackass with a big mouth.

That was the worst event of the day, but it was just the icing on a cake of catastrophes. To top it off I had to call up the babysitter to get round to my place because I was...