LIFE, it seems, is just one long instruction not to do things. You know the sort of thing – councils putting up stern notices telling people no ball games are allowed, or not to walk on the grass.

Bossy boot businesses self-importantly surrounding themselves with barbed wire and keep out! notices when there’s no danger apparent or trade secrets to be scuppered.

Big brother health bosses telling us we’ll drop dead if we so much as look at a bottle of wine or dare to eat a fried egg once in a blue moon. Insidiously nasty parking bullies who threaten to clamp our cars or tow them away if our car wheels stray a smidgeon outside a parking bay white line.

Everywhere we go, whatever we do, notices or instructions displaying varying degrees of bossiness constantly plague our lives. Do not cross the road! Mind the gap! The lift doors are now closing! Get this special offer now! Stand well clear! No left turn, no right turn….

In fact whatever direction I turn as I perambulate through my day, in the office or out of it, I can’t do so without being admonished, told off, instructed or entreated. And always by anonymous signs and instructions or via a self-important ping in my inbox.

Aren’t we so incredibly bossy? Don’t we just love telling people what to do? Are we never happier than when we’re extolling the need to do this or do that, or not do it at all? For I reckon we’ve got a small-minded and self-righteous streak in our national psyche that relishes a tendency to throw around our weight for the supposedly collective good of us all.

It might come from the buttoned-up secretary in the office who knows everything there is to know about the right and wrong way to submit an expenses form, the protocol that absolutely must be adhered to in seeking an audience with the boss, and the number of pencils, pens and notebooks that it’s acceptable for you to have from the stationery cupboard.

She’s the one who produces spitting-feathers holier-than-thou notices about the state of the staff kitchen or the loos, the one who organises leaving-do collections browbeating you into coughing up more by greeting your initial offering with a sniff and curl of her perfectly depilated upper lip, and the one who draws daggers at dawn if you so much as waft a report for the boss within 10 metres of her empty (naturally) in-basket.

Or it might be the jobsworth marking his territory in the high street who smirks somewhat as he tells you not to park here, push your shopping trolley there and move along, please. It could be the ‘I’ve-worked-here-for-years-so-don’t-mess-with-me-because-I-so-know-my-job’ shop assistant or department manager who looks witheringly at you if you have the temerity to complain about shoddy goods sold or services not delivered.

‘Absolutely NO refund allowed, modom,’ they might sneer as they hide behind an ‘it’s our policy’ mantra as though you had no business even walking in to their hallowed presence in the first place.

And you end up feeling yet again, that this is just another specimen of what you can’t do or can’t have to add to the litany of dos and don’ts that prevail in our lives.

But I found one example the other day that really took the biscuit, as I idly browsed the internet while I waited for someone on the other end of the phone to come back off hold and tell me that no, I couldn’t have this or do that, and it went like this: “Because of the hazard to plants and to windows, no games of any kind, apart from croquet, even informal throwing of a projectile, may be played in any of the quadrangles. The permitted times are: (a) sitting and strolling: noon to dusk; (b) croquet: 4pm to dusk (Monday to Friday); noon to dusk (Saturday and Sunday).

“Please note that ‘strolling’ is quite different from using the lawn as a short cut. Strolling does little damage to the grass because there is no regular pattern of use; using the lawn as a short cut quickly wears a groove in the lawn, which is both unsightly and damaging for croquet use. Please do not use the lawn as a short cut.”

Which was Oxford University’s way of telling its students to keep off the grass. I just hope they understood it…