So when do you use 'myself'?

[PigeonPie]

We have just had a letter home from school and the Acting Head writes 'Myself and other members of staff have ...'. Now, the only time I can think that 'myself' is appropriate is when you might say 'I hurt myself'.

Are there any others, because I can't at the moment?

I quite like it myself

Oh, yes, I'd forgotten that one!

It might be terrible grammar - but I do say it myself

Oh, there you go - even if I do say so myself

I wash myself?

Estate agents always seem to be abusers of the reflexive.

I hate it when they say something like: "If you have any problems, call the office and ask for myself". It's ME, you daft bugger.

"Well" said the Little Red Hen. "I will do it myself".

"I wrote a letter to myself"

and not

"Please write a letter to myself", as people seem so fond of saying these days,

In your example, I think the test of whether you are using the right pronoun is taking the other person out of the sentence and seeing if it still makes sense. e.g. "Myself and other members of staff have..." makes no sense. "Other members of staff and I have" does make sense. But I'm not sure now, the more I think about it. There must be a way to put yourself at the start of the sentence...? Maybe it is correct?

Here's a example of the estate agenty usage - heard it earlier in the Big Brother fest:

There are two uses, reflexive, so "I wash myself" and erm, the other, sort of emphatic, "The Queen herself opened our local Tesco"

Thank you for all these examples.

Now...

... how do I tell the Acting Head?

Overheard this morning: "Do I make that cheque payable to yourself or to xxxx?"

That doesn't feel as wrong as some other abuses of "yourself". But it should be "payable to you" really?

"Please write a letter to myself", as people seem so fond of saying these days"

Gaaaaaagggggh! I dont' know why but this makes me want to scream, vomit, an screach my finger nails down a blackboard whilst chewing on tin foil!

Yes, it should be payable to you. Yourself is generally reflexive, meaning that the actor and the actee (is this even a word?) of the verb are one and the same. So I make dinner for myself, you make it for yourself, he makes it for himself.

SPB, I'm not sure what the "emphatic" version's called either - it's a bit like "I'm typing this myself" - kind of redundant, so just for emphasis. Need to look it up.