On the Beat

According to the Daily Telegraph, more than 75% of Britons are unable to name the three countries that make up Great Britain. They did a poll, of course.

(via Arbroath.)

They were talking about this on 5Live this morning...

In Wales, road signs are in both English and Welsh. The people who put up this sign sent the English text to a translator, took the response and put it on the sign.

So the Welsh on this sign reads "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".

(From BBC Wales.)

Edit: kittenexploring has pointed out some of the other signs that the BBC article talks about:

• Cyclists between Cardiff and Penarth in 2006 were left confused by a bilingual road sign telling them they had problems with an "inflamed bladder".
  
  
• In the same year, a sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading 'Look Right' in English read 'Look Left' in Welsh.
  
  
• In 2006, a shared-faith school in Wrexham removed a sign which translated the Welsh for staff as "wooden stave".
  
  
• Football fans at a FA Cup tie between Oldham and Chasetown - two English teams - in 2005 were left scratching their heads after a Welsh-language hoarding was put up along the pitch. It should have gone to a match in Merthyr Tydfil.
  
  
• People living near an Aberdeenshire building site in 2006 were mystified when a sign apologising for the inconvenience was written in Welsh as well as English.

I was dozing listening to the radio early yesterday morning, and "Wake Up To Money" was on. (This is a misnomer; I have woken up to this many, many times - but no more money than I ever have.) Half awake, I would swear that I heard them tell me the Co-Op was buying Sellafield (aka Windscale), a British nuclear facility. I was very, very confused.

It was only later that I realised they must have been talking about a bid for the supermarket chain Somerfield...

* * *

Then this morning I was glancing through radio listings in the paper when I noticed that Front Row featured Mark Lawson investigating the role of female dentists.

I had to read it again before I realised it said Mark Lawson investigates the role of the female dramatist.

Until recently, I had been spared the pain of spam, the crowding out of useful email by junk email. Somehow, though, my personal email address has been discovered by the purveyors of this junk, and I now get several spam emails a day.

( Spam! Wonderful Spam! )

I just managed to put £3.53p through the ultra-hot wash. (I was taking pshtaku's advice to try to shrink my jeans.)

At least it is now clean - very clean - money.

I am generally ambivalent about buying poppies for Rememberance Sunday. Whilst I know that it is rememberance of people who died to protect the country and others, and thus it expresses solidarity with those who suffered; but I can't help but believe that somehow it glorifies war. Usually I give some money and don't wear a poppy.

But this morning on 5Live, they were debating the current hoo-hah of "poppy fascism" - the need to be seen wearing a poppy.

Some caller came on the line saying that he didn't wear a poppy because he didn't believe in the wars. We shouldn't have fought in WW2, because it wasn't our war - we should have kept out of it. And when the presenter said "What about the holocaust?", this *rsehole said that was absolutely nothing to do with Britain at all.

So I am now the proud possessor of a poppy; and I gave them more money than I would otherwise have done. In rememberance of that c*nt's ignorance.

Twice in the past few weeks I have needed to hire a car; I used the same firm both times – the first because it worked out cheapest when I was looking around, the second because I was too lazy to look anywhere else.

The first time I booked a petrol-engined car the size of a Focus or Astra; what I got (when I turned down the automatic turbo SAAB they tried to get me to drive) was a four-wheel drive diesel-engined tank. It was huge, sat high in the road and although it handled well, it was a real pain to park. I had never driven a diesel before, so I lived in fear of filling it with petrol by mistake.

The second time I was going away by myself, so I just wanted a small car. I ordered something the size of Corsa; what I got (after I turned the automatic they tried to get me to drive) was a Ka. It was small. It went ok, but it felt small. (Probably because it was.) It also had a cassette player rather than CD, which I found very strange; I had to dig out some old CDs (which meant I was listening to old bootlegs of Elvis Costello and Oasis; fun, but not what I was expecting!).

After both hires, they asked me how satisfied I was with their service. So I said the cars were fine, but I was disappointed because on neither occasion did I get the car I was expecting. I also expressed surprise at them trying to fob me off with an automatic both times.

And both times they gave me a discount voucher – once for an upgrade, once for 15%.

As a result of this, I think I shall try and find something wrong whenever I rent a car from them!

I went swimming in my local pool today; it is an old Victorian building, with the men's changing cubicle along one side of the pool, the women's on the other.

I noticed someone in the pool. They were talking on a mobile phone.

Shall I just run that by you again? A mobile phone. In the swimming pool.

I am just back from a week-long visit to the USA.

( Whenever I travel to the States, I am amazed and amused by the immigration forms one needs to fill in. )