My tract on manners has been kindly received.

Bonnie Self, of Halesworth, writes: “I am no Hyacinth Bucket but I do feel that ‘manners maketh man (and woman!)’ and, like you, I find such common courtesies sadly lacking in today’s world.

“If someone actually holds a door open for me these days, it makes the headlines when I speak to my sister in the morning.”

“Words like ‘please’, ‘thank you’, ‘excuse me’, ‘sorry’, ‘after you’, or ‘may I have the pleasure (of a dance, I hasten to add!) have disappeared.”Bonnie recalls the distant days when “young men would open doors for you, give up their seats on buses, pull out chairs in restaurants and hold out your coat for you while you slipped into it.”

Penny Power, of Great Cornard, also regrets the passing of the age of etiquette.

“So I am not the only one that gets SO cross when I hold open the door and no one bothers to say thank you.

“In another life I was a receptionist and I always stood up to acknowledge the incoming person, it is just common manners! How many receptionists nowadays, that is if you can find one, is planted behind an enormous desk staring at a screen who hardly even looks at you when you approach (how do people under five feet cope?). You are left feeling guilty at interrupting their busy time on their computer.

“When you see the headline in the local papers: woman arrested for saying thank you, you will know it’s me..... one day I will get in to so much trouble as every time I open a door for someone, or stand back to let them pass on the pavement and they don’t acknowledge me I have found myself saying loudly ‘thank you would be nice!’”