You have been a grate riter…

by Bill Kirton
So began the message on a card my granddaughter had made to welcome me on a visit. She didn’t then go on to analyse my work or offer any criticism, constructive or otherwise, so I couldn’t really ask her to elucidate her choice of tense, but I found it an interesting one. ‘You have been’ doesn’t have the negative implications of ‘You were’. ‘You were’ means you’re no longer whatever it is, as in ‘You were a grate riter but now you’re rubbish’. But ‘have been’ still does give you...