Beep.

Disclaimer: For censorship reasons (obviously) we have had to replace a certain four-letter word, crucial to this piece, with 'beep'; we apologize if the impact is lost.

Beep.

Bee Eeh Eeh Pee. Beep.

Terrible little four letter word that taints my soul each time I utter it.

It's almost become like a mantra now, we regrettably admit, and only the clenching of our teeth stops us from spewing it out at the worst of times, in front of family and impressionable children.

On bad mornings, the first thought one's mind articulates, and one's mouth mutters, is a long-drawn painful 'Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep'. Beep dances in one's head, and rolls on the back of the tongue till one has fully woken up.

As the heat grows/you get irritated/NOISE grows, the one thought mulling, fermenting in your brain? Beep. Beep me, Beep you. Go beep yourself. I don't give a beep. Beep, beep, beep.

And with every bee eeh eeh pee, your headache swells. And why not?

It's a terrible thing, this bee eeh eeh pee, and we don't seem to realise it. Don't seem to realise that it has infiltrated our vocabulary, that for some of us, it has crossed the line, from being a cussword to a mere punctuation mark, a vocal tic in every beeping sentence, and I just illustrated that for the reader's benefit.

It's turned genteel ladies into foulmouths. It USED to differentiate between the well mannered upper crust and the crass low class, but apparently not any more. Now we're ALL pretty much beeped.

Beep doesn't discriminate by caste, class, colour or gender. Beep is a virus. Uttered by the 11 year old schoolboy who's trying to be all badass to impress, by the frustrated college student with deadlines, everyone.

So here it is, BEEP. We've reached the pinnacle of the cussword hierarchy, after decades of politesse. We've done something great, we've reached up to take that unattainable elitist bee eeh eeh pee and its relatives, and we've brought it down to the masses.

What next?