Get rid of the husband

Bless the [current] Princess of Wales!

No doubt you are as surprised as I am by the beginning of this post. But I feel that until she was criticised for her grammar this past week, I have been fighting – or thinking about – a losing battle. Me versus I.

I remember noticing this in the 1970s, when studying in Brighton. Not sure whether we actually learned this (but I would like to think we did), or if my gut told me how it ought to be. Because I did notice when my landlady Mrs G used ‘I’ instead of ‘me’. I didn’t mind. I just found it fascinating to see what I’d learned, in the wild, so to speak.

My retort has always been, that if you say ‘for my husband and I’; if you really can’t see why it should be ‘me’, that you get rid of the husband, and then see how you feel about your sentence.

David Cassidy (and I never thought I’d hold up this US heart throb as a leader on grammar) used to write a column in teen magazine Fab 208, and one time he reminisced about a girl from school, running after the other children shouting ‘wait for I’.

Told Daughter about this the other day, and she was first astounded and then very grateful. She had been taught this ‘I not me’ at school and never liked it. But if the teacher says so…

And now I have seen it very sensibly in print, in this week’s New Statesman newsletter, making it worth every penny of the subscription cost. Thank you Nicholas, whoever you are. And maybe Kingsley Amis too. Also Shakespeare.

And yeah, I know I’m not a native speaker.