Barmy Britain (15 page)
Authors: Jack Crossley
Beijing has been busy correcting more than 6,500 traffic signs in a bid to eradicate bad English before the 2008 Olympics.
Its Ethnic Minorities Park was originally signposted ‘Racist Park’.
Sunday Times
Alan Norris, of Loughton, Essex, asked a Tesco supermarket assistant where he could find cloves and was told only their larger stores sold ‘cloves’.
The Times
There was controversy over British sailors being allowed to sell their stories after being seized and held by Iran.
When pressed in the Commons to apologise, Defence Secretary Des Browne used the phrase: ‘I have expressed a degree of regret that can be equated with an apology.’
The
Observer
commented: ‘We were highly impressed by his nimble manipulation of the English language. Still, you do wonder if, sometimes, it might not be easier to say sorry.’
Observer
A
Daily Mail
reader wrote in about that sentence which uses the word ‘had’ ten times in a row (‘James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher’) and came up with one which has 13 ‘ands’ in a row.
‘When a company called Holland and Andrews had a new sign painted, the sign writer got the spacing wrong.
‘The company complained: “There is too much space between Holl and and and and and and and And and And and And and drews.”’
Rick Legend, Cyprus.
Daily Mail
In a BBC search for the worst ever pop lyric Des’ree’s song ‘Life’ got the ‘honour’ with:
I don’t want to see a ghost
It’s the sight that I fear most
I’d rather have a piece of toast.
Despite a late run there was no place in the top ten for Shakira’s ‘Whenever, Wherever’:
Lucky that my breasts are small and humble
So you don’t confuse them with the mountains.
The Times
Adam Jacob de Boinod has produced two compendiums of unlikely, but useful, words that other languages enjoy but English does not. They include:
- Baku-shan (Japanese) – a woman who looks better from behind.
- Nakhur (Farsi) – a camel that won’t give milk until its nostrils are tickled.
- Tantenverfuhrer (German) – an aunt seducer.
- Pesamentiero (Portugese) – one who habitually joins mourners at the homes of the deceased to get at the free refreshments.
- Chapponner (Gallo dialect of French) – sticking a finger up a chicken’s bottom to see if it is about to lay an egg.
The Times
The fear of long words is called
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
Reader’s Digest
My late grandfather used to tell me that while there were only 36 words in English containing the letters ‘ough’ there were nine different ways of pronouncing them - all of which could be found in the rather obscure sentence: ‘Though a rough cough and hiccoughs ploughed through him, he houghed the horse with thorough thoughtfulness’. Nicholas Pritchard, Southampton.
The Times
Having breakfast at Heathrow Airport, I asked the waitress whether the orange juice was freshly squeezed and she replied: ‘It’s freshly squeezed out of a carton.’ English is indeed a wonderfully rich language.
Matthew Dick, West Sussex.
The Times
The stormtroopers of the Equal Opportunities Commission never sleep. A journalist filming a stand at the Commission’s conference asked if the stand was manned. ‘It is never manned’, was the frosty response. ‘It is staffed’.
Daily Mirror
A language kit designed to help British
long-distance
lorry drivers criss-crossing the linguistic frontiers of Europe enables them to order chips in six languages.
The Times
Luigi Amaduzzi, the Italian ambassador in London, says he will never forget his first visit to an English pub. ‘I asked the barmaid if I could have a quickie. I was mortified when the man next to me said: “The word is quiche, pronounced queesh”’.
Daily Telegraph
I saw a young woman wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan: ‘Practice safe sex – go fcuk yourself.’ We deserve to be protected from language like this. When the word practise is used as a verb, it is spelled with an ‘s’.
Andrew Taylor, Knowl Hill, Berkshire.
Independent
‘Ronking’ means to smell badly, as in: ‘Blimey, it ronks in here. Who farted?’
The Times
102 languages are spoken in East London.
Guardian
The ultimate citizenship exam for English people planning to move to Wales could be a test of their pronunciation of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysliogogo goch. Rattling off the name could be an excellent way of overcoming Welsh fear of cultural domination by the English, according to a local government official in the Anglesey town. The name’s sequence of 58 letters forms a Welsh pronunciation course in miniature, with almost all the usual difficulties condensed into one word. Visitors will be relieved to hear there are no plans to follow the example of 19th century Welsh nationalists, who are said to have extended Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysliog ogogoch’s name to embarrass seekers after holiday cottages.
Guardian
The last person to speak only Cornish was Dolly Pentreath, who died in 1777. Her last words were: ‘I will not speak English, you ugly black toad.’
Daily Telegraph
Call centre employees in India are trained to understand almost any regional UK dialect and to become familiar with British slang and obscenities. A special dictionary explains that: ‘“Rogering” is an act of sexual
intercourse
’, but ‘“I’ll be buggered” is merely an exclamation of surprise’.
Historian Paul Johnson wrote that nobody can be truly English until he can say ‘Really’ in 17 different ways.
Daily Mail
The National Canine Defence League changed its name to ‘Dogs Trust’ because too few people understood the word ‘canine’.
Daily Mail
Barclays Bank has dug up more than 200 words for money in the English language. Top ten are: dosh, dough, readies, brass, bread, wad, lolly, wedge, wonga, moolah.
Sun
The United Kingdom? A
Times
letter saying that English is the language ‘that God actually speaks’ got a swift response from an Aberystwyth reader asking: ‘Would He not have communication difficulties with the language of Heaven being Welsh?’
The Times
And a man from Powys was convicted of racially aggravated harassment after calling a Welsh woman English.
The Times
The Mexican Institute for Indigenous Languages fears for the future of the Zoque tongue. The only two people left alive to speak the language are two brothers who have fallen out and no longer talk to each other.
Independent on Sunday
Times master wordsmith Philip Howard rejects the old notion of prose as the selection of the best words, poetry as the best words in the best order and journalese as any old words in any old order.
The Times
Fear of the mother-in-law is: PENTHERAPHOBIA
The Times
‘On Friday, when he retired, Mr Reber was presented with a portable TV and a pair of binoculars.’
Essex Country Standard
(from the
Guinness Book
of Humorous Gaffes
)
Edward Fuller, of Gillingham, Dorset, came across some multi-nutrient tablets for people aged 65+. They were labelled ‘Do not take if you are pregnant or likely to become pregnant.’
Daily Telegraph
‘I still shave every morning using the rear-view mirror of the last Spitfire I flew in World War II.’ Jack Feeney, Plymouth.
Guardian
The revised Highway Code features a new section on powered wheelchairs. This follows a spate of accidents involving the elderly and disabled (nicknamed ‘Hell’s Grannies’) driving in a reckless manner.
In 2004 seven were killed including a woman who reversed off a pier into the sea, and a man who was run over by a wheelchair painted in the colours of a Ferrari.
Sunday Times
An 84-year-old Weymouth man stepped out of the shower and water dripped from him onto his new bed. He tried to dry it with a hair dryer, but the mattress caught fire. He dragged the mattress into the porch, where it ignited a plastic gas pipe. This started a fire which burned down half of his roof and caused the evacuation of four nearby houses.
Guardian
I have heard that the four ages of man are: Lager, Aga, Saga and Gaga. Can anyone add a fifth?
Ron Stubbs, Maidstone,
Kent. Daily Telegraph
The fifth age of man is Viagra, but I’m not sure if it goes after Lager and before Gaga. Hilary Stevens, Liskeard, Cornwall.
Daily Telegraph
Eileen Bridge, a 68-year-old love-struck grandmother from Accrington, Lancashire, beat hundreds of teenagers in a competition to find the nation’s most poetic text message. She was runner up with an ode she wrote to her new husband:
Oh hart tht sorz
My luv adorz
He maks me give
Myslf 2 him
As my luv porz
Daily Telegraph
Visiting an old people’s home in Florida, George Bush Senior once reportedly asked a resident: ‘Do you know who I am?’ The reply was: ‘If you want to know who you are, you have to ask at reception.’
Observer
When my husband told a Saga holiday-going friend that Saga means Senile And Geriatric Association, she replied: ‘Nonsense, it means Sex And Games for All’.
Dee Moss, Oxford.
Daily Telegraph
Alex Baker, 96, has lived all his life in the house where he was born. The terraced house in Portsmouth, Hampshire, was bought some ten years before he was born for
£
130 and is now worth
£
130,000. There were two bedrooms upstairs and two rooms downstairs, plus a scullery and an outside toilet. There was a tin bath in the yard. The house has changed very little apart from an extension for a ground floor bathroom and Alex says: ‘Why would I ever want to leave?’
His wife Edith, 86, says: ‘Our key was always in the door and anybody who wanted to come in and have a cup of tea and a biscuit was always welcome.’
Alex says: ‘We used to take our best shoes and clothes to the pawnbrokers on a Monday and get them back again on Friday.’
Daily Telegraph / Daily Mail
The NHS in Sunderland apologised to Joseph Dickinson for telling him to ensure a parent accompanied him to hospital. Joseph is 103.
Sunday Times
A wrinkly pop group called the Zimmers (with a combined age of over 3,000) shot into the UK’s top 40 singles chart at number 26 in June 2007. It features Alf Carretta singing ‘I hope I die before I get old’. Alf is 90.
Guardian
‘A very good thing about getting old is that one can leave one’s grandchildren when they start crying’. Norman Balon, landlord of Soho’s Coach and Horse and known as the rudest publican in London, quoted in a collection of essays by famous oldies.
(
The Time of Your Life
, compiled by John Burningham.)
Independent
A
Times
reader asked: ‘When does one become elderly?’ The replies included:
‘Middle age involves having to sit down to put on one’s socks, whilst elderly demands a seated posture to put on one’s underpants’. Simon Powell, London SW 11.
‘When one’s broad mind and narrow waist change places’. Frances Rentoul, Guildford, Surrey.
The Times
Ted Towle, 83, and Hilda Clarke, 73, from Nottingham, got married after living together for 49 years and producing nine children, 22 grandchildren, and 25
great-grandchildren
.
Ted explained: ‘Hilda won’t be rushed into anything.
Independent on Sunday
In June 2007, the UK’s oldest triplets – Doris Kingston, Alice Holmes and Gladys Caress - celebrated their 80th birthday with a barbecue and a bouncy castle at Selby in North Yorkshire. They take their holidays together in Yorkshire resorts just up the road such as Whitby and Bridlington.
When they were born in 1927 their father was given a
£
1 note for each girl by George V.
Daily Telegraph
62-year-old grandmother Jenny Brown, of Wimblington, Cambridgeshire, was pleased when told that her Victoria sponge had won second prize in a village cake competition.
She was less pleased when she learned that it was the only entry.
Daily Mail
Firemen raced to an old folks’ home in Hampshire after a smoke alarm was triggered by a pensioner warming slippers under a grill.
Independent on Sunday
Retirement no longer means slippers by the fire, knitting, reading and early to bed. A survey found that many intended to spice up retirement by embarking on extreme sports such as parachute jumping, bungee jumping, hang-gliding, swimming with dolphins and going on safari. And there were some who wanted to eat more cakes, grow a beard – and have more sex.
Daily Telegraph
The number of Britons reaching the age of 100 hit a record 9,000 in September 2007. The Daily Telegraph delved into ‘The Secrets of the Centenarians’ and quoted some of them:
Jean Underwood, of Bridport, Dorset, said: ‘I have a nip of brandy in my coffee in the morning, no more than a teaspoon, unless I tip the bottle too heavy’.
Sarah Cooke, of Arnold, Nottingham, said that she had everything she needed ‘apart from a 100-year-old man – or two 50-year-olds’.
Daily Telegraph
David Davidson, 79, and his wife Jean, 70, of Sheffield, stayed in a Travelodge in 1985 and liked it so much they moved in and have lived in one ever since. They even stay in Travelodges when they go on holiday. Said a Travelodge executive: ‘We are going to rename their room The Davidsons’ Suite and mount a plaque’.
Sun
Oh dear, what can the matter be? A 77-year-old lady spent 12 hours in a public lavatory in Pickering, North Yorkshire, when the caretaker locked up and went home. ‘If I had had my mobile with me,’ she said, ‘I’d have been all right.’
Independent on Sunday
Friends of 100-year-old Phyllis Self believe she is the oldest boss in Britain. The great grandmother drives herself to her Whitehall Garden Centre in Wiltshire each day and says: ‘I have no health secrets. I eat what I like and have a whisky and ginger in the evenings’.
Sun
Nora Hardwick, aged 102, got her kit off and posed nude for charity behind the bar of the Ermine Way pub in Ancaster, Lincolnshire. She said her children, aged 80, 74 and 62 ‘were very supportive’.
Sunday Telegraph
Harry Patch, of Wells, Somerset, the last surviving veteran to fight in the trenches during the First World War, celebrated his 109th birthday in June 2007. He served with the Duke of Cornwall’s light infantry and fought at the Battle of Passchendaele, one of the bloodiest battles of the war. After blowing out the candles on his birthday cake Harry said: ‘It’s all a lot of fuss about nothing.’
Daily Telegraph