As we relax and chat round the dining table after dinner, our dinner guest rather abruptly rises and plucks a book from the shelf. Riffles through its pages and then says, nodding at the rainbow on the wall, made by myself and some neighbour children, "You might want to double-check that." He grins, quite clearly very pleased with himself.

He's right. The rainbow is disordered: red, blue, purple, green yellow, instead of the correct Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. In part a result of inadequate hues of construction paper, but mostly of disinterest in stopping production to look it up. I have since double-checked. I know it's wrong. I could fix it... but then it wouldn't be the children's work any more, would it? I said the latter to him, mildly, then changed the subject.

You know what?

If you have to look it up before you're sure enough of your facts to correct someone, perhaps you should reconsider the correction in the first place. And there are better ways to say "Thanks for the lovely meal" than to show up your host.

Pretentious nit. See if I invite you to dinner again.