While others have been inundated with Valentines, I have been inundated with hate mail.

Friend Sara had two Valentines, one from her husband, the other, I suspect, from Tony the gorgeous muscular urban housecleaner who "does" for her whatever it is he does for her.

The sender of the hate mail will probably take issue with my use of the word inundated as, strictly speaking, I have only received one actual letter of hate, plus one from the relative formerly known as mother.

But its effect has been to cloud my thoughts permanently with thoughts of it. So, in a sense, my whole self has been permeated by the thing and I think I can get away with the word inundate.

Anyway, it arrived last week - a tiny bit of newspaper, marked with blue pen and in the margin a few brief words of scrawly handwriting drew my attention to the marked lines.

Anyone who has ever been sent such mail will know its effect can be unsettling and your thoughts keep returning to it, as you wonder who sent it and why they singled you out for abuse.

The passage torn from the newspaper was actually something I'd written a few weeks ago.

The section underlined read: "Roger is a graphologist, or handwriting expert to you and I ..." and the scrawly handwriting in the margin read: "Don't you know anything about grammar?"

So, Mrs Scrawly Handwriting (yes, I know that Roger the graphologist said my own scrawl showed that I had antisocial arsonist tendencies), yes, I do know about grammar - I did done it at school ... and I realise I should have said "a handwriting expert to you and me" and the relative formerly known as mother had also written to point this out, but somehow, in the heat of the chaos that is my life, I overlooked the grammatical error but did it really warrant B-movie style hate mail?

In my defence, I was probably trying to finish the piece with one hand feeding baby rug rat, the other nit-combing older rug rats and the phone cradled between shoulder and ear, as I tried to get a plumber to come to sort the sink, which was blocked, causing water from the washing machine to back-up into the kitchen.

On top of this, computer has American spell and grammar check so the odd Donald Rumsfeltilsm creeps in.

Anyway, I realise the above is no excuse for lapse in professionalism and I also realise that receivers of genuine hate mail will probably think I am protesting unnecessarily but, when you're working by yourself in a boot cupboard, now office, and you receive scrawly messages (like the ones someone of very little brain keeps leaving on cars in the street, implying they are parked selfishly when in fact they've been parked there for days and other cars have moved around them, leaving gaps), you tend to take it personally.

Fortunately, I also received some spirit-lifting fan mail this week. It was written in nice legible handwriting (so was not from an arsonist with antisocial tendencies) and emanated from an address in America (so was not from pedantic of Poynings).

The writer said how much he liked my writing style (grammar and all) and how my pieces always cheered him - hooray.

My moment of pleasure was quickly spoiled by Thomas who pointed out that said writer could only read my pieces by accessing English newspaper web sites from internet cafe in Idaho, from where letter was addressed.

This, he pointed out, made him a very sad geek, who, like sender of hate mail and parents, I would be well advised to take no notice of ...