Perhaps it's because I am an ungracious receiver of complaints that I'm not a great complainer myself. I am a mutterer and so is my husband.

We sigh loudly in supermarket queues and splutter in quiet incredulity to ourselves over unavailable sundries. But actually forming our mouths around a public criticism . . . well that's just taking things a step too far. "Not worth it!" is the defence we use and yet it is, usually, worth complaining.

I know this because I have two English friends who are both magnificent complainers. One is mistress of the stiff letter to supermarkets in particular. "Imagine my disappointment when I drove an hour out of my way to your North London 'Superstore' which purports to stock "everything" and discovered that there was no masarpone cheese. Not so 'super' now, eh?" The other friend goes more for the brute force of a histrionic housewife. In Britain there are people trained to deal with people like her. Her proudest moment was in a well known chain where her failure to procure two jumbo packs of own-brand frozen cocktail sausages for an imminent barbeque sent her into a furious frenzy drawing a well-mannered young man fresh from a Customer Services management course from out back. He foolishly suggested that she might buy fresh cocktail sausages. "Do I look as if I am MADE of money?"

she shouted at him waving her brand new Nissan Jeep car keys gripped in fists made of expensively french manicured nails at him. "And, " not content to leave it at that she added, "You have a very poor selection of shortbreads!" Not 'no shortbreads', you understand, but a 'poor selection'. That sort of detail separates the men from the boys in the world of customer complaints.

Her local supermarket have never seen her like.

One day their customer services man tried to placate her over a "sub-standard" bouquet with some free carnations. "Carnations!" she cried. "Are you trying to insult me?" He returned with two bunches of top-of-the-range lilies. The area in which she lives is positively crawling with disillusioned English people who can't afford to live in Surrey and have moved to Mayo. They complain about the weather, the smell of silage and the fact that there is no Marks & Spencer . . . all of which is very, very annoying. But they also complain about the inflated price of things and there being no mascarpone cheese and bad service. They ask for 'skinny lattes' in cafes which are still struggling to come to terms with the concept of the cappuccino.

And because they are so good at complaining it means the nice local people don't have to. The other day I noticed my local cafe advertising chichi breakfast options. There is every possibility that a Mayo cafe owner decided there was a market for organic porridge with fresh-fruit compote all by himself . . . but I like to think there is some repeatedly complaining Brit marauding through Connaught towns demanding low-cal options for us all. Re-balancing the scales of history . . . one complaint at a time.