I foresee some tough times ahead. My 20-month old grandson has a little neighbour, 2 months older. These two love each other in a way I have never seen in children so young. One might think they were twins of the soul. The other boy is a couple of months older and very different in character. But they want to be with each other all the time; they sing and dance together; they pretend to cook together; if one is unwell the other will stroke and cuddle him; they go to the playground together and tumble about like a pair of puppies; they eat together and feed each other. In about seven weeks, the neighbouring boy is leaving London to go back to Germany for good, whence his family came. I cannot imagine the sorrow these two little ones don't yet have the words to express. But we will know! We will most certainly know.

There was a man on Radio 4 this morning telling us about how many unexpected bird species are living happily in London (this man is a birdist, or something, as distinct from a Twitcher: Twitchers are competitive types, rather like feathered-train spotters; birdists actually know a lot about the birds).

How shall we see these wonderful things? asked the other guests on the programme. When you leave the building, just look up, said our man.

I foresee some bruising encounters. Would-be birdists, heads up, crash head-on into i-Phoners, heads down, texting as they go.

Once again at a restaurant pavement table in the sun in Primrose Hill. Ages ago (how long? No idea, and I'm not about to look) I wrote about this part of town, white, middle class, village-y - where the beautiful people live. The tables are tiny round wooden affairs, for two. Next to me, ranged over a couple of these, is an American family, mom, dad, two young kids (8 and 5?) and a baby on dad's knee. Mom is one of those who talks to her children. And I mean talks. I imagine that if she wanted the kids to have a bath she would reason them into it with explanations of the value of hygiene and smelling sweet, no raised voice bawling at them to get their ass in right now!

As I tune in she is half way through telling one of them, who must have been cavilling at something on his plate, 'I remember when I wasjust a little kid, I was told to try it and I hated it? Then a few years later, I tried again, and I hated it? And then when I was a student I tried it, and I hated it? But then when I was 30 I tried it again, and it was so good!'

The kid has his head turned away so I can't tell if he's convinced by these interrogative statements. Dad gets up to pay, baby slung over his shoulder. While he's inside a car pulls up by the kerb right by the Americans, just as another family of parents and young ones is passing.

I hear the father's voice (aggressive, South London),'What the fuck do you think you're doing there? You could have killed us!'

The driver of the car is taking a box of some produce out of the boot for the restaurant. He is swarthy; mutters in an Albanian accent, 'What are you saying about?'

'You drove right onto the kerb there. I had to pull my kid away!'

The car is neatly parked, by now no longer on the kerb. The driver looks down and shakes his head. 'No, no. I am properly.'

'You fucking drove right over the kerb.' Mother with other kids has progressed down the pavement, but now looks over her shoulder to monitor her husband/partner's righteous outburst. The driver, now with a second box in his arms, seems suitably cowed and wisely contrite. The Americans are watching silently.

Angry father preparing to catch up with his wife/partner, delivers the killer shot. 'And that's a crap car you've got there. Fucking piece of American shit!'

I look at the car. It tells me it is a Seering, whatever that is.

American Mom now launches into an exegesis for her kids. 'That man should not have used those awful words. I mean, it was right, the other guy shouldn't have driven onto the sidewalk, but he shouldn't have used those words.'

Which did she mean? The fucking bit or the rude references to the US automotive industry?

A ridiculous series is running on BBC TV. Each hour long episode is meant, I suppose, to make us go, 'Oh wow! I never knew that! Amazing!' But what actually are we learning, buried (deep) in the excited presentation?

1. That US democratic idealism gives way to self interest when there is conflct between the two.

2. That the USA doesn't know a huge amount about some parts of the world.

3. That the USA objects to other powers (Russia) seeking to exert influence over the countries on their borders...as if the USA itself does not.

Yes. Well. And? What did these programme makers think international  politics was ever about? Can they really have been so naive as to suppose that secret communications between a nation's ambassadors and its homebase might ever have been different? So far I believe we have learned zilch to shock us.

Does it seem petty, all my complaining about little misuses of language? Pedantic? Old-fashioned? Probably, but there is a reason for caring about it.

Many years ago when I was still a BBC radio journalist, I made a series of programmes about Writers and Politics. One interviewee was Arthur Miller. He was very exercised by what was happening in Czechoslovakia - this was in 1980 or thereabouts. The Communist government had imprisoned pretty much all the writers who were what could be considered the keepers of the language. And with those guardians tucked away out of trouble the authorities proceeded to re-fashion the Czech language to make it say what they wanted it to. And since only Czechs and Slovaks spoke Czech and Slovak there was no one to protect the integrity of speech and writing. He who has the word has the final control.

Miller made the point that English is lucky. So many people all over the world speak and write in it as a mother tongue that if one country falls victim to dictatorship others can carry the flame. But we are unwary. Many of the English-speaking peoples are letting their languages slip into the careless fists of government and business jargon, or of academic gobbledygook. People think that so long as you can more or less make yourself understood, who cares if you mistake one word for another, or lose the power of a phrase by continuously misusing it so that there is no difference between one choice of expression and the nearest easy alternative?

Ultimately this is how we will let go of our guard. If the euphemisms of power and money are given space we will have ceded ourselves to them. All language is sacred, crucial: without clarity and exact and careful use of words, in the end we will be nothing.