There is much to be said for a short, bracing spell in our personal wilderness, without booze or chocolate or fags or TV and, pre-spring, these few glorious weeks of chilly anticipation, is the perfect moment for it.

But perhaps it is time to extend the list of Lent resolutions to include less obvious, more emotional indulgences. We might, for a start, deprive ourselves of the heady pleasure of flashing around feelings when what is needed is argument and thought. When, to take a small example, the English actor Richard Wilson wanted to express his disapproval of the Labour government, as he did last week, he would, during Lent, avoid deploying the term "deeply upset", as if the policies of Tony Blair had made him cry.

Recently, supporting a view with a tidal wave of feeling has become an easy way of declaring your own passionate sincerity. It is no longer quite enough to be in disagreement with a point of view; to be taken seriously, you need to express emotion, outrage, offence.

This new sensitivity to more or less anything can sometimes be confusing. I was recently contacted by a woman who had just read a book I had written almost 20 years ago for children, and was deeply offended by it. It was a story about a character called Ms Wiz, who was a witch but was so opposed to gender stereotyping . . . politically correct before the term came into use . . . that she insisted on calling herself a "paranormal operative".

My correspondent was disturbed by the use of the term "Ms". Although the story explained why Ms Wiz used that prefix and turned out to be the very model of female empowerment, this adult reader was still affronted. She seemed unclear as to the specifics of my inappropriateness but sensed in the way that I used "Ms" that there was something here to offend her.

Then there were the doctors. A few weeks ago, at a time when GPs were revealed to have annual salaries in excess of 100,000-plus, I told the story of a friend who had a brain tumour and was slackly treated by two local doctors. As GPs are being well rewarded, I suggested, they should not be above criticism.

The response was startling. Two doctors put sensible counter-arguments but the other emails from GPs were mind-bogglingly emotional. Three doctors were "deeply offended". Several were personally abusive. Two suggested I had made the whole story up. One told me that, since my friend was anyway under a sentence of death, the way the GPs behaved was neither here not there.

Those remarks, as it happens, would justify a certain amount of offence but, in preparation for this period of self-denial, I merely took them, with their bizarre combination of emotionalism and insensitivity, as confirmation of the very attitudes within some parts of the medical profession to which the article was attempting to draw attention.

What is all this huffiness and affront? When did merely disagreeing become inadequate and emotion obligatory? On the whole, the more personally affronted people are, the less clearly they think. If we could all just give up taking offence for the next 35 days, it would do us the world of good.