"The strangers you would bring would not understand us, our customs, our local ways."

I was walking young master T to his preschool this morning, when a local man passed us. We smiled a hello and T waved. The man greeted us in return and added shirtily, "Aha, young man, at least you wave ... unlike your mother."

Whaaaaaaat?

If I see him out and about, I always say hello and smile. His house is along the road we walk, and I could leer in his windows everytime we go by, but I don't. I think it's rude to look in people's windows. Maybe it isn't, according to local ways: maybe he's glued to the glass, waving desperately each time we pass and I appear to be studiously ignoring him.

I don't want to start staring in his windows: what if he's picking his nose or watching Jeremy Kyle or something equally shameful?

For the record, if I don't see you, I'm not going to bloody wave. What am I, a bleeding ocean?