As some of you may have read, staff at Hickory’s Smokehouse in Worcester forgot to display the Poppy Appeal tin which provoked something perilously close to outrage.

As a result the manager, Steve Bonnington, has issued a very gracious, dignified apology and offered to make a significant personal donation to the cause. Such gentlemanly conduct and old-fashioned humility (behaviour which would no doubt win the approval of our veterans) is rare today, so rare perhaps that is a virtue teetering on the brink of extinction. Most people in my experience never admit when they're wrong. Perhaps they don't believe they can possibly be in error or perhaps it's merely pride. But in my book it takes a certain nobility, if that's not too grand a word, to admit a mistake.

I felt Mr Bonnington's response contrasted quite markedly with the rather petulant comments of Robert Turner, landlord of the Crown Inn in St John’s, who voluntarily delivers and collects the tins and announced ‘shame on you’ in a Facebook post after staff forgot to put out the tin.

I hope Mr Bonnington's clearly sincere and heartfelt apology is now the end of the matter and that Mr Turner will now accept it with the same good grace accorded to him.

I can’t see there is much more Mr Bonnington can do (or indeed should do) after what was simply an oversight. None of us are perfect after all, even Mr Turner who is no doubt a great asset to the Royal British Legion.

Volunteers such as him are of inestimable value to the communities they serve and without them the world would be a poorer place. Even as a 'journalist' (if our kind readers will permit me to refer to myself as such) I sometimes feel it's a shame when disputes such as these escalate and are played out on the pages of a newspaper rather than being settled in a more edifying, amicable fashion, perhaps over a pint of beer or a cup of coffee.

We are so willing, are we not, to expect the worst of each other? Before we have even sat down and talked to each other properly and, more importantly, listened, we have already begun to ascribe some sinister motive, some malignant intention, some grave deficiency of character, to our fellow man.

It is a lesson for us all, myself included, to sometimes give each other the benefit of the doubt.