My friend was audibly unhappy with me when he phoned. ‘You know, you really should be very careful when you email. The internet is not a secure place. One careless touch on the keyboard, and you can upset
somebody... know what I mean?’

I’d worked out what had gone wrong before I was able to speak through the thick layer of egg accumulating on my face. A mutual friend of ours in the USA, notorious for his tenuous grasp of technology, had committed the great, and increasingly common, computer faux pas of accidentally reflecting back a message you’ve received in an email you’re now sending out. The eek moment I was now enduring was a direct consequence of this. A message that the mutual friend in the USA had sent to my friend in London had somehow included an earlier message from me to friend in USA that was slightly mocking of friend here.

Actually, such a humiliating slip-up as this doesn’t have to be accidental. Some of the clumsier email utilities automatically repeat the received email in every reply, although how friend in USA managed to include my somewhat sarcastic sentiments about a third party in a message to that third party still baffles me a little. Anyhow, the damage, such as it was, was done and I apologised. Not much else you can do, really, to get out of the sort of jam I’d inadvertently got myself into.