In Britain, except at school, “please” is no longer used in asking permission to speak, and the phrase “No, please”, so common abroad, would sound most unusual in Britain itself.
"I talk Spanish at home, except with my brothers, with them I speak English, " says Adriana, a teenager at Bell High School in East Los Angeles, California.
When I left school, I rather left Paralympics and disability sport behind - except for an ill-fated attempt at getting a bunch of lads to play blind-folded football on a beach in Greece during a summer holiday.