Dear Sir...

Throughout my own schooldays up to the age of 18, I was required to address every male member of staff above a certain class threshold (that's English social class, not school class) as "Sir". Researchers into the fossil remnant of the English class system in public schools in the 1980s may be interested to know the extent of this: headmasters, teachers and the bursar were all to be "Sir"ed; the school marshall (a terrifying sergeant-major figure whose role was primarily disciplinary) was either "Sir" or "Marshall"; the catering manager was "Mr _____" but definitely not "Sir"; and male cleaners, groundsmen and porters were called by their first name.

However -- and this is the point I'm meandering towards making -- the "Sir" category very definitely covered the school librarian.

Now, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that the students at the sixth form college which I will, for the purposes of this weblog, refer to as St Brad's, don't call me "Sir". Indeed, I don't think that the subliminal linguistic assumption that every adult male of a certain social class was automatically my superior has done me many favours in later life, and it bothers me far more on the extremely rare occasions that they do. (It mostly seems to be the Muslim lads, for some reason). What dumbfounds me, though, is when they call me "mate".

As I say, the last thing I want is for them to be servile. But I mean, honestly, "mate"? Nobody calls me "mate". My mates don't call me "mate". These aren't even students who know me well, just random library users. They're not taking the piss in an affectionate (or indeed an aggressive) way -- they just appear to be under the honest impression that "mate" is a perfectly appropriate thing to call an adult.

Am I suddenly "out of date", as the young people say these days? Or am I still carrying round a crippling burden of resentment from my decade of "Sir"ing every vaguely patrician male in the vicinity, and don't see why the younger generation should have it any better? Worse still ("mate" being a pretty working-class appellation, after all), is this a symptom of snobbery which my school, despite my best efforts, succeeded in indoctrinating me with ?

Or is it, actually, slightly (or even more than slightly) rude for a child to call a man nearly twice his age, whom he doesn't know particularly, "mate"? Answers on an email, please.