I recently had the good fortune of attending the opening of the St. Helier Yacht Club, a quaintly fashionable little venture founded by an old friend of mine from my days at Eton. As you can imagine, a spiffing time was had by all concerned, and I must admit to raising a glass or two of port too many to my erstwhile companion, Captain Edward Hernshaw, or simply "The Captain" to his friends. It is down to this that I must put my agreeing to be introduced to a young woman who another guest assured me to be "an absolute hoot, Mister Clark, a most delightful wit and, I believe, an artiste like yourself!". Foolishly, I agreed to this exchange of formalities, and allowed myself to be formally addressed by this 'artiste'. A discreetly placed tape recorder takes up the tale.

Random Guest: "Ah, Mister Clark! There you are! I was worried that you'd left!"

Me: "Leave? I? Why, my good fellow, that is the LAST thing I'll do! (Looks at watch.) And, quite possibly, the NEXT thing......."

Random Guest: "Hawhawhaw! Ah, my dear Mister Clark, you are quite incorrigible! But let me introduce you to this quite DELIGHTFUL creature I have on my arm! Mister Clark, this is cutegrrl5_uk. cutegrrl5_uk, this is Mister Clark."

Me: "Charmed, I'm sure."

cutegrrl5_uk: "a/s/l?"

Me: "I BEG your pardon?!"

Random Guest: "Ah, yes, I forgot to mention the fact that cutegrrl only speaks in Internet slang. Well, I shall leave you two to it! Goodbye!" (He leaves.)

cutegrrl5_uk: "a/s/l?"

Me: "I'm sorry, I only speak English."

cutegrrl5_uk: "age sex loction"

Me: "Oh. Well, I'm twenty, male and am from Scotland."

cutegrrl5_uk: "k 19/f/tx"

Me: "How nice...... And yet, your name has the suffix 'U.K', denoting citizenship of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. A less understanding person than I would, at this point, already suspect you of being a downright liar. So, what do you do?"

cutegrrl5_uk: "im at school"

Me: "I see. What do you do outside school?"

cutegrrl5_uk: "whatever"

Me: "Mmmm-hmmm. That must be........ interesting."

cutegrrl5_uk: "depends lol :)"

Me: "Do you, in fact, do ANYTHING of any interest or note whatsoever?"

cutegrrl5_uk: "some1 i know killed herself :("

Me: "Mmmmyeees..... Well, that's a start, but I was thinking more in terms of something in which you were causally connected somewhere along the line."

cutegrrl5_uk: "u r sweet do u have a gf"

Me: "What?"

cutegrrl5_uk: "girlfREIDN"

Me: "That's not actually any of your business, is it? Do you realise how much money the popular tabloids would pay to acquire details of my marital status?"

cutegrrl5_uk: "ROFL U R FUNNY"

Me: "Could you please stop speaking in capitals, or switch your Caps Lock off or something? Quite apart from anything else, it's rather disturbing that even your real-life conversations are littered with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes."

cutegrrl5_uk: "DO U HVE A PIC"

Me: "Yes, many, but none that you'll ever see. You see, cutegrrl, you and I just don't have anything in common. Scurrilous rumours that Internet chat rooms are the last refuge of the lonely, boring and desperate are fashionable things to bandy about these days, and do you know why? It's because they ARE. It's because every chatroom is filled with people like you, people who have no contact with anyone in the real world, people who desperately try to carve out a life for themselves on the 'Net as a substitute for the REAL life and REAL experiences they are sadly missing out on. You don't have to look hard for those kinds of people: they're everywhere you look. They're the ones who put ten million exclamation marks after people's names in chatrooms. They're the ones who have had 348 boyfriends, and never actually meT any of them. They're the ones who perpetually use smiley faces, and shout "LOL" and set up secret clubs where they can all get together and indulge in a bit of self-gratifyingly masturbatory sycophantic backslapping. 'no1 understands me apart me excpt U GUYZZZ!!!!! HUGZZZZ!!!', they say, happily dishing out insincere and meaningless compliments to all in the hope that they'll receive a few in return. Many of them set up websites of their poetry, all about how underestimated and misunderstood they are and, when you endeavour to read their SHOCKINGLY self-indulgent and shoddy attempts at versification, you begin to see exactly WHY no-one understands them. It's because there's nothing TO understand, except that the Internet is filled with people who are completely starved of love, attention, companionship and self-belief, and so desperate for all four that they'll do anything to get even the merest whiff of them. And maybe, just MAYBE you'd feel sorry for them, if it wasn't for the fact that they are almost always so self-pitying, self-deluding and MIND-BOGGLINGLY dull that you can't help but feel that, somehow, they've received their just deserts. Because, cutegrrl, no punishment devisable by man could be greater than that which you and your kind have mapped out for yourselves: a lifetime of sterile, unsatisfying and utterly meaningless encounters with thousands upon thousands of people who are all just as stupid, unimaginative and downright pathetic as you, yourself, are."

cutegrrl5_uk: "u suck"

Me: "Indeed. Well, yet another section of society is comprehensively CRUSHED by the watertight arguments of Thomas J. Clark, Esquire! Who shall be the next unfortunate minority or, indeed, majority to undergo a ruthless character assassination at my hands? One thing is sure: no upper-class social gathering will ever be the same again."