I have at last found something in which I truly excel. I don’t mind telling you, modesty forbids and all that, but I am actually, genuinely really good at this.

I have found myself to be absolutely excellent at thinking of replies to people who have been rude to me...four hours after the incident occurred.

Oh the withering put downs I can come up with are astonishing, I can tell you! You really should hear them.

I usually deliver these to the mirror where I’ve also perfected a sort of mocking, sneering and superior expression to accompany them.

It often helps that by this time I’ve had the chance to look at some facts on Google and can embellish my remarks with pointed factual evidence to add gravitas to the response.

Faced with this highly-tuned and incisive riposte, the offender must surely wilt.

They would be cowed into submission by the few devastating sentences I would unleash upon them.

They would be crushed. Their arguments systematically dismantled before them, the charred and redundant tatters of their now bankrupt case torn asunder, shredded, annihilated and left out in the sun to dry.

They would withdraw, blooded and beaten, a spent force, overpowered by my wit, humbled by my incisive eloquence, trounced, vanquished, undone.

A highly satisfying turn of events I think you’ll agree.

To those of you who might, despite their admiration and deference in the matter, feel obliged to point out the bit about the four-hour delay as being somewhat problematic here, I merely shake my head.

My friends, what matters this?

What matters this when such grandiloquence, such loquacity can be deployed.

When the gift of bombastic magniloquence is within reach.

The fact that in the actual moment, when it actually happens, I’m usually mute and useless is hardly the point.

What happens in real life is that stung and surprised by the rudeness or the pointless demand from some lowly, officious apparatchik (“you can’t stand on that side of the line with your hat on mate”) I’m usually too annoyed to think of anything at all.

The best I can manage is an angry stare. And don’t call me mate! It’s only four hours later when the perfect reply lands in my lap.

It’s not as if I’ve even been brooding on it when the perfect put down comes to me.

And come to me it does. Only four hours too late, that’s all.

On consulting the world clock, the city that is exactly four hours ahead is Dubai.

Maybe I could move there and phone my responses back to the UK to make up the time gap?

No, that’s not going to work is it.

Occasionally, if flustered and backed into a corner I will blurt out my default rejoinder...which is “I’ll see you in court”.

But that can seem a little overdramatic when the crime is that someone’s just misspelt my name or something.

And I’m the one who ends up looking a fool.

It’s a tricky business.

They say that timing is everything.

I suggest you delete this from your mind, go away and read this again in four hours.

What? What’s that you say?.... I’ll see you in court!