Of course, there are things you do to pave the way for success before entering into one, like saying “Bonjour, madame” when walking into the boulangerie to pick up your baguette, or beginning a request with “Excusez-moi de vous déranger”—“I’m sorry to bother you”—leading off with an apology, letting a salesclerk or receptionist know that you recogn

And all this agonising – this ridiculous time-wasting – was because it took me another thirty years to learn that if you say ‘No’ in a friendly, chatty way, people accept it with great grace and goodwill, and do not hate you, or send death squads after you, or report you to the Daily Mail. And until I realised this, I found myself resenting perfect

2. It’s my job. Except that it wasn’t. I wasn’t promoting anything. In fact, the interaction could have been detrimental to my career, were I to have inadvertently said something insulting about the king of Norway. Technically, there was more downside than upside.