LEADING QUESTIONS

The glass cabinet gleamed. Top shelf: replete with muffins (by the look of them, the fabled tropical muffins I keep going on about). Bottom shelf: a plate of regular-looking chocolate brownies.

I licked my lips. It's been a while since they've had the tropical muffins in - and as you know, a more succulent, delicious, diffuse mix of textures and flavours you'd be hard pushed to find.

The usual lady was waiting behind the counter. Next to her, the chef, who was deep in concentration, was counting money from the till.

Eyes wide, I was about to open my mouth to ask for a tropical muffin...

"Oh you must try one of the brownies today," she interrupted, "Nick [the chef] made them, and they are to die for!"

Nick looked up from his counting with barely the flicker of a smile. I reflected on my options.

What are you supposed to do in this situation? The longer I took to deliberate, the more awkward it got - I could barely ask for a tropical muffin now, and I was conscious that explaining myself if I did, would be like scooping water from a sinking boat. I looked back at the golden muffins. I looked down at the very ordinary brownies.

"Well sure," I said, gulping, "I'll take one." She beamed, then wrapped up a chocolate brownie for me.

We're all guilty of asking leading questions. I do it; I do it all the time without realising.

"Do you want to help me?"
"Would you mind...?"
"Any chance you could...?"

Sometimes I hear myself asking these questions-it's-impossible-to-say-no to, and I cringe on the inside. I never want to put any pressure on anybody, and I certainly don't want to present a choice of options without considering the possibility of a no. I don't want to run any team I'm in that way. I always want there to be the possibility of the tropical muffin.

The trouble is that in our culture, we've already experimented with how to de-lead-ify a leading question, and unfortunately all the fluff we've added to leading questions has just made it a whole lot worse.

"Say no if you don't want to, no pressure, just asking, just on the off-chance..." - sometimes means the exact opposite, making it even harder to say no, actually adding pressure, being more than a simple question, and with all the hopes and dreams of my world resting on the chance that you'll say yes... We don't make it easy, do we?

Well. I ate the brownie. And, to be fair, it was delicious. With apologies to Nick the Chef, it wasn't stop-the-world-I-never-want-to-eat-anything-else delicious like the tropical muffins are, but it was pretty good.

I'm sure there's a lesson in here for me, somewhere.