Watch Your Language

When I was a young boy, I remember having weekly spelling tests every Monday with one of our junior school teachers, Mr Strangwood. In order to prep for this weekly test, each Friday we would be issued with a list of five words which we needed to both learn how to spell, and also how to use these words within a sentence. I seem to remember that my dad, when giving me a bath on a Sunday, would test me to make sure I was ready for the Monday morning test.

One Sunday, one of the words was ‘reservoir’. While I could spell it no problem, I struggled to come up with a sentence using the word. Looking back I can’t quite believe that as it would seem so obvious to go for something like ‘the reservoir is filled with water’ or ‘they sail their boats on the reservoir at the weekends’, but at the time it seemed really tough. My dad, bless him, came up with something which I can’t quite remember, but it was a really abstract little sentence – something like ‘the brain is a reservoir of intellect’. You know when you look up a word in the dictionary and find it has several meanings, with the last being the least commonly used? Well whatever the sentence he came up with actually was, it would have been making use of the word’s least-obvious definition, and quite rightly instead of looking very intelligent for my age, Mr Strangwood gave me a very quizzical look the next morning when he saw my sentence.

My dad isn’t the best speller, but this piece wasn’t intended to knock his grasp of English. However, one lesson that my dad taught me was that if you’re unsure of how to spell a word, or what a word means, you look it up. Whenever he was writing reports for his job, he would always have his dictionary to hand. The advent of spell checkers on word processing software has made it easier to avoid terrible literary faux pas, which is why I find it even more unbelievable when I see awful spelling in very public media.

I decided to collect a few examples of poor spelling or grammar in adverts that really irked me with their carelessness, and I’m sure that if you wanted you could append many other examples. In so doing, please note that this is definitely not a ‘flog’, a covert attempt to encourage people to purchase goods or services from the following companies, and hopefully after reading some of them it may encourage you not to. It is merely an attempt to highlight how careless people can be with language; a cultural indictment on our modern, lackadaisical age if you will.

The first was a leaflet dropped through our door advertising a new local pizza delivery company called Pizza Village. It was quite a well-laid out flyer, good imagery and clear. But the spelling was awful. Among the usual suspects, Pizza Village – whose name suggests of course that a hut just doesn’t represent enough pizza anymore – offer some varieties I’ve never seen before. For example, they offer a Hawain, which in losing the extra ‘i’ turns this badly concocted fruit / meat juxtaposition into something that evokes a Constable painting, a pastoral take on the pizza genre but which probably still tastes like a badly concocted fruit / meat culinary juxtaposition. They also offer a Vegetarian Itliano, which really made me laugh – if you’re going to make an attempt to bastardise regional cuisine, at least make an attempt to spell the country of origin correctly. Not happy with the choice of toppings? Well, you can choose from tune, perppers and jelapeno. And if you’re a healthy eater, the salad bar includes crutons. Want to go large? Under meal deals you can have any 2 canned drinks and 2 colslaw. On the same page, just a few centimetres away, you can have colsalw. Tempted?

In fairness to Pizza Village or their graphic designers Hashim Designs, some of these words are a little tough, especially two that are essentially foreign. And at the end of the day, we should encourage local businesses shouldn’t we? Even those ones that peddle cheap stodgy crap.

I had the pleasure of having an estate agent drop a very boring leaflet through my door, advising me that Alan Francis, the agent, had recently sold a house on our estate. ‘Wow,’ I inwardly exclaimed. ‘What an achievement in a buoyant housing market.’ Then, whereas I would normally throw such litter in my recycling bag, I decided to have a read. Alan, bless him, seems to have a bit of a penchant for inverted commas, except that like Joey in one episode of Friends, seems to have a bit of difficulty understanding how best to use them. Poor lamb: under the advantages section, which is supposed to make you immediately ring Alan up and beg him to sell your house for you, he has stated that his company makes use of ’24-hour “internet” advertising’. Now, when I read this, ignoring the obvious fact that the internet doesn’t have a period between 5.30PM and 9.00AM where you simply can’t get hold of anybody, it being essentially an ‘always on’ service, his use of inverted commas to highlight the word internet actually makes me think that he doesn’t have an internet presence at all, and that in fact, when he uses the expression ‘internet’ he means sticking pictures of your house in newsagents’ windows (the tenuous connection to the internet being that the newsagent stocks computer magazines). Further on Alan claims to have a ‘Mayfair office’, which being again similarly picked out in inverted commas implies that he has probably never even been to London but that he knows naïve punters might see this and think his tinpot firm a much larger concern than it clearly is. But most of you, thankfully, won’t have heard of Alan Francis.

So let’s pick a slightly larger concern – Morrisons Cornish Pasty Company, which has a counter in my local town centre, and, if my research serves me well, branches across the country. Every Saturday when we go into town it amazes me how long the queues are at this store, and I feel quite pleased that people are shunning Burger King which is only a few units down in favour of arguably better food. But pleased though I am by this small culinary revolution, I can’t forgive Morrisons for their signage.

My wife, knowing that I am a fickle bastard when it comes to English, mentioned to me about a ‘Save The Apostrophe’ society, which I heartily embrace and it’s companies like Morrisons that should be at the top of this society’s hitlist if it ever decides to set up a militant wing. For above the queues of slavish consumers runs the legend ‘Morrisons Cornish Parties – Makers Of The Worlds Finest Cornish Pasties’. Subtle, I know, but wrong, wrong, wrong not to include the possessive apostrophe when stating – and who can prove or disprove the assertion? – that the best pasties in the world are made by Morrisons. The sign picks out the letters in a bright yellow colour on a royal blue background, and I’m often sorely tempted to buy a sheet of yellow paper, cut out a small apostrophe-shaped piece and glue it between the ‘d’ and ‘s’ of ‘worlds’ and smugly reflect on my small contribution to the correct use of our fine language..

Still, it remains quite a small error and one that will probably have escaped widespread attention. So let’s find a more high profile one.

Britney Spears. Hardly a name that one would associate with outstanding spelling or grammatical abilities, at least not since she sloughed off the wholesome Disney image and opted instead for risqué outfits. But then again, I wouldn’t associate her with perfume either, but release a perfume she has. It’s such an obvious move that I haven’t even bothered to remember the name of this no doubt acrid smell; it’s so clichéd to do this these days, and I’m sure that celebrities aren’t really involved in deciding on topnotes and bottle design, but it has that celebrity’s name and image attached, and therefore it is she who can take the flak for the terrible spelling exhibited on the advertising spots that frame ITV2’s new flagship US import, the highly enjoyable if brattish Entourage.

Whatever this perfume is called, the spots are filled with garish swathes of pink and green with scrolling statements loosely tied to the word ‘entourage’, with a few words whispered over the top, presumably by Britney herself. One of the scrolling statements, which I am pleased to say has been removed from the sponsorship of the new series said ‘Capitvate your entourage’. Capitvate? Surely sponsors of high-profile advertising campaigns for flagship imported programmes aren’t this careless with their spelling? Doesn’t anybody check these things over? And anyway, what does ‘captivate your entourage’ actually really mean?

The aforementioned Mr Strangwood, on his first day as our teacher, stood up in front of us and said ‘Occasionally I will make mistakes with my spelling deliberately, just to see if you’re paying attention,’ which was of course nonsense; people do make mistakes, that’s human nature. But if you believe that adverts are golden opportunities to sell your wares, then at least take a bit of care and pride over your advert and spell things correctly. Surely it’s not much to ask.

Wonderment

When they boarded the train at Bletchley, I was preparing myself to be annoyed - four adults, four kids, London-bound no doubt as part of their Easter holiday. The adult in front of me reeked of smoke, the kind of smoke that's been absorbed over many days and months into clothing and which barely even smells like cigarettes any longer. The kids were noisy and the adults were too engaged in their conversation to make any effort at calming the kids down or reminding them that there were other passengers around them. Other passengers such as me, sat behind one of the kids trying to keep my head down and work. My Blackberry was the source of considerable intrigue to this child, who kept turning around and poking his head between the seat backs to see what I was doing, evidently believing that I was using some sort of handheld gaming device (if only). And so, all in all, I was expecting this to be one of those really lengthy, uncomfortable and unproductive journeys to work.

As the journey progressed, my frustration mellowed. After all, it's the school holidays and actually it was me - not this family - that was out of place on this post-rush hour train, which during any school break is packed with families taking advantage of cheap day return tickets into London (a bargain at £12.90 for an adult compared to £30.90 at peak times), and this was the first train of the day where you can use such tickets. When I alighted at London I was certainly in the minority given the paucity of fellow besuited commuters. Everywhere I looked were parents holding the hands of small children or trying to get a baby-filled pushchair from train to platform or trying to restrain their child in their yearning to get through the barriers and on with their day out. And actually, this entire scene at the platform was extremely heart-warming to see. Our great capital is perfect for days out, and any alternative to kids sitting at home watching DVDs or playing PlayStation / Wii / Xbox is always going to make me more optimistic about children and the modern world in which my own daughter is growing up in.

I remember badgering my parents for many years to take my sister and I to London for a day out. They finally yielded one damp Easter Sunday - I wish frequently that I could recall the year - and drove my sister and I to the capital, parked up on Edgware Road and the four of us trekked our way across London (no tubes for us as mum was, post the Kings Cross fire, wary of them), the glee and excitement of a day spent on our feet seeing the places we'd only ever previously seen on TV overriding the tiredness which my sister and I must have felt. Whenever the drudgery of working in London begins to take over, I remind myself of that Easter Sunday and of how exciting it was to be there and how vast and impressive the city turned out to be in reality.

But back to the double family sat in front of me on the train. What finally made my initially frosty attitude thaw was the sheer wonderment of the boy in front of me. It was an enthusiasm that was contagious, filled with the kind of questions and enquiries of his dad that only the innocent child can ask. He reflected the positive lack of self-awareness that kids have and which over time can be cruelly stamped out of them by education and society. He didn't worry that his enquiries may have seemed pointless or ridiculous to an adult, nor did he seem to be suspect that his father was not in fact an expert in all of the areas he wanted to know about.

The boy seemed genuinely thrilled to be on a train, and wanted to know everything from the number of tracks, to the types of train they might see and even a subject so apparently banal (to an adult) as the frequency of fast trains into Euston. He'd shout the name of every station we stopped at and act confused when we'd pass through certain ones at speed without stopping. Likewise he could barely conceal his excitement at the prospect of being on board an Underground train. The mystique of your first train or Tube journey as a child are lost on people like me who do this most days of the week, but seeing this boy's genuine joy made me recall that yes, once upon a time, this was exciting to me, long before it induced a crushing ennui in me.

If my memory serves me, my first rail journey would have been from Birmingham New Street to Glasgow when I was about four, travelling to see my now sorely-depleted Scottish relatives with my mother. I can remember distinctly how exciting it was on board that train, even though it seemed to take an age, marvelling out the window at the interesting things there were to see as we wended our way northward. My mother pointed out a heron in a lake somewhere in the countryside, but at the time I didn't even know what that was and couldn't fathom what I was supposed to be looking at, and wouldn't see another until I saw one in the park at St Albans nearly twenty years later. I also remember dropping dolly mixtures all over the floor and doing lots of colouring in. But most of all I remember, after seeing this boy's alacrity, just how thrilling that train journey was, from waving goodbye to my dad at New Street to being collected by my now departed Uncle Harvey at the other end.

My first Underground journey wasn't until much, much later. My fellow second year university student and housemate Craig and I took the train from Colchester to London one wintry Saturday afternoon, and then took the tube from Liverpool Street to the West End where Craig wanted to buy some history books from Foyle’s, whereas all I wanted was CDs from the HMV on Oxford Street. By this time I was twenty and well beyond being able to gush all the way to London about how overjoyed I was at finally getting to ride a Tube, but I felt it inside. Craig had lived in London all his life, and for him it was second nature like it is to me today, but for me, just being in London, going Underground and witnessing Oxford Street in the run-up to Christmas was incredibly and pleasingly overwhelming to the senses.

Prior to this my mum had always said that the pavements along Oxford Street at Christmas were so clogged with pedestrians that you were swept along as if by a tide, and this had always made me somewhat nervous - but intrigued - about wanting to shop in London before Christmas. True, I'd never seen policemen standing at crossings with megaphones barking out when people should wait or cross, but beyond that I could have been mugged at gunpoint and it wouldn't have dampened my enthusiasm one jot.

And this innocent boy, himself no older than four or five, reminded me of all those things and made the effort of commuting all the more worthwhile. It also reminded me of how fantastic it's going to be when Seren, my little angel, is able to approach life with that same wide-eyed awe, that quest to know the why's and wherefores of absolutely everything, and no matter how tiring it might be to be on the receiving end of a barrage of Paxman-esque enquiries, I can't wait.

Spring

Spring is undoubtedly in the air. The clocks went forward last weekend and, as if by some meteorological magic, the first day of British Summer Time was a glorious bright and sunny day, with just a hint of coldness to remind you that we’re not quite out of the woods yet and that those jumpers need to stay on the top of the pile in your wardrobe. To misquote Charles Dickens, a man must be a misanthrope indeed in whose breast something like jovial feeling is not roused by the recurrence of spring. I am that man.

One of my neighbours, a burly South African, is impervious to cold weather and has been wearing shorts throughout the winter; his sole change to his wardrobe in the spring months is to switch to flip-flops rather than trainers, and then in the height of summer loses even the flip-flops to walk from house to garage barefoot. Everyone in our street, aside from our immediate neighbours – with whom we do actually talk from time to time – has their own, made-up, identity – his is No Shoes, his wife rather cruelly is Lilo Lil after the character in Bread; further up their terrace lives Paul O’Grady just because he has a passing resemblance to said TV personality, and next to him live Dane Bowers and his girlfriend Jordan. Except that Dane is in fact from Yorkshire rather than Essex and Jordan is anything but the surgically enhanced creation who previously dated the real Mr Bowers. There are many others, but you get the gist.

No Shoes’ dad visits him frequently, and leaves breakfast hanging from their door handle on a Sunday morning in a Tesco carrier bag. He has one of those Hamish / Germanic beards that clings to the underside of his chin and neck with very little hair on his cheeks, and so we have dubbed him Hans. It passes the time. Hans and No Shoes are keen gardeners and have set about transforming the garden area around the communal parking area they share with Dane & Jordan, Paul and the other residents of the terrace and their activities at rejuvenating an otherwise staid area of block-paved car parking over the past week have thoroughly depressed me.

Spring of course heralds the onset of the gardening season, and once again I find myself being torn between excitement and misery at another year of failed seedlings, slug-ridden borders and wonky lawn edges. My parents have decided to rid themselves of their lawn this year and instead have opted for a mostly paved series of staggered patios with large pots filled with exotic plants, which seems like an eminently sensible idea as I embark once again on a no-doubt futile attempt to create a cottage style garden with lots of colour all year long whilst trying desperately to undertake as little actual hard work as possible.

After last year’s debacles, including the infamous mini-greenhouse / high wind setback, the army of slugs that left my meadow border devoid of anything except poppies, and the sweet peas that refused to climb the canes I lovingly and competently lashed together despite never having been to Scouts, my gardening confidence is at an all-time low, and therefore the onset of spring provides little cheer for me. What does bring some cheer is the birdoir that I have created in a tree at the bottom of the garden consisting of various food-dispensing items which are proving popular with a family of blue tits, sparrows and a pair of blackbirds, thus ensuring that our mostly house-bound cat sits at the lounge window going nearly out of her mind. At least I feel like I'm doing my bit for the disappearing avian population.

Similarly, I was reminded yesterday as I boarded the train home of how uncomfortable train journeys in the summer can be, and even now a commute can be rendered hellish as the temperatures subtly rise (as they seem to be at the moment) while the train companies react slowly to switching off the heating – heating which has just one setting, ‘oven’ – leaving you needing a coat outside the train because it’s just a little bit too cold to go without, but shedding layer upon layer of clothing once you get inside the train for fear of passing out through heat exhaustion. The heat inside the carriage means that everyone pulls open the paltry windows to allow cooler air to circulate around the carriage, rendering effective use of headphones useless unless you want to cause permanent ear damage by spinning your iPod’s volume ever clockwise to counteract the increased noise generated by wind swirling through the windows and around the carriage.

Last year I commented on the simple joy afforded by the early morning sun rising over the old Pearl Assurance building on High Holborn as you turn into that road from Southampton Row. Reflecting on that inspirational morning ritual, as well as the way the City’s few tall office buildings reveal themselves to you as you walk further down High Holborn to roughly Chancery Lane, has also depressed me since the clocks went forward. In order to see those remarkable sights, I'd need to be walking into the City from Euston, as I was for much of last year. This year, unfortunately, hasn’t got off to the best start and I've probably schlepped into work on foot probably no more than once, and so I've missed out on all the things I used to cherish on my way into work, and all the new things that one can see by just varying the regular journey to work. I can, however, confirm that there is nothing new or of interest on the Underground line between Euston Square and Liverpool Street.

That’s not to say that I haven’t got great intentions of exploring the area around our London base this year. I have made a firm promise to myself to go and visit some of the capital’s landmarks during lunchbreaks and obtain a better understanding and perspective on the history and geography of London. Call it a late New Year’s Resolution, but for the last eighteen months I've been obsessing over New York City after a fateful trip there in 2005 and have devoured endless nuggets of information about that most beautiful city, and have largely ignored the City on my own doorstep. The pleasant introduction of clearer, sunnier days provides an impetus and a drive to get out into London whenever I can, but this will be a struggle while I continue to choose sitting on my backside eating my lunch at my desk to plough through more work over going out at lunch for a stroll. Might as well have another biscuit, eh? That Damien Hirst exhibition round the corner on London Wall runs until the middle of next week after all.

The acknowledgement that my life seems to be an unhealthy blend of too little sleep, early rises, sitting on trains for long periods (with the attendant breakfast and snacks offered by travelling first class), bouts of stressful energy, followed by an hour on my feet delivering a presentation, followed by the train journey home, provides yet another reason to be uncharacteristically pessimistic as we enter spring. My weight is presently hovering at or around 11.5 stones, which is the heaviest I've been since sixth form, I have lost the definition to my leg muscles and in all I've started to feel like turning thirty last year has brought with it an appropriate middle-age spread.

I have therefore been shanghaied into joining a local gym, ostensibly so that we can take Seren swimming, but more likely because my wife can’t conceal the giggles when I remove my clothes to change into pyjamas at night. I've been here before – this is the fifth gym induction I’ll have been on in almost ten years – but this time it feels like it’s driven out of necessity rather than some vague opportunity to partake in a leisurely pursuit than I never found particularly leisurely. I therefore feel surprisingly motivated today, despite contemplating a no doubt humiliating tour around the gym this evening by some toned beefcake who thinks the route to all human happiness lies in the intimidating area of the gym known as ‘The Free Weights Area’.

In spite of all of this, the recent pleasant weather holds forth the promise of days out, picnics with our daughter and generally a more optimistic outlook after the cruel and punishing winter months. I find this time of year a much more opportune time to start making those big plans, rather than just after Christmas where everything feels a little strained and miserable. My head is buzzing with the things that I want to achieve for the rest of the year, the decorating jobs I've been avoiding all winter, the garage that I've been trying to clean out for over a year, the unused things that need to get put on eBay, the savings that we’ve not made and the things we always said we’d buy but never got around to. Oh, and that book I said I'd write but didn’t and all those things I promised my wife I'd get done but was too lazy in the winter to be bothered with.