If you are seeking to request a visit to the sewers of New York City, you will spend about half an hour on the phone talking to various incredibly polite people who work for the city of New York. They will treat your call with utmost respect and express no audible astonishment that you want to visit the sewers and indeed are writing a book about the disposal of human excreta. They will do their best to assist you, they will call you “ma'am,” and at the end, when they have assisted you by giving you another number to call, they will wish you a pleasant day and thank you most sincerely for having called New York City.
In this pleasant and helpful way, you will reach the telephone extension of a woman called Madeleine in the public affairs department of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Madeleine's colleague will listen to your request, endeavour to assist you and say, “I'll just see if she'll take the call. She might take the call.” The reason for her doubt becomes clear when a woman gets on the line who sounds like the weight of seven galaxies is resting on her shoulders. She says, “you have no idea how many requests we get to visit the sewers.” I say I may have an idea. She says, “you can put in a request and I'll forward it to the right people but there's no guarantee they'll respond.” She says this makes her feel terrible. I don't think it makes her feel any more terrible than she must feel at having the weight of seven galaxies on her shoulders.
Madeleine says, “Are you a student?”
I put her straight. I am a proper, grown-up writer. I am such a proper, grown-up writer, I have managed to persuade Thames Water to let me down their sewers. I tell her I have written a world-famous article about this and I will send it to her in an email so she can pass it on.
“Oh, OK,” she says, sounding like she feels terrible. “I mean, you can do that by all means. But no-one will read it.”
Oh. With that, she directs me to the website of the New York City Department for Environmental Protection, Wastewater Treatment, and promises I will find everything I need on there. She still feels terrible that she can't be more helpful. She is a brick-wall made of galaxy-weary politeness. I don't know why the Americans need to use conventional weapons in Iraq when they could just kill people with brain-sucking courtesy.