How many Tescos are there?

I like the Daily Post. It's North Wales's only daily newspaper, and as such prides itself on being a cut above the smaller, weekly competition.

So imagine my dismay when I read the headline for a story about a new supermarket opening:

"Tesco ARE coming" (the newspaper's capital letters).

A shame it had to cap-up ARE, which only compounds the error. You or I may regularly refer to Tesco as "they" in everyday speech (not helped by the fact most people call the company Tescos), but a company is a singular entity, and I can only hope and prey there is not more than one Tesco. The Daily Post would have been better served with "Tesco IS coming". As for the town in question, I doubt it'll be any better served by Tesco whether it's coming or not.

By the way, a reader has kindly pointed out an error in my previous post (about Straits). The Strait separating Singapore from Malaysia is called Johor. The Singapore Strait separates the city from Indonesia.

But it's still only a Strait, not a Straits.

When is a strait a straits?

As far as I know, there is only one Menai Strait. So why is it nearly always referred to as the Menai Straits? Why is there a restaurant in Menai Bridge called The Straits? Apparently, there is a newspaper in Singapore called The Straits Times, named after - yes, you guessed it - the Singapore Strait, which separates Singapore from Malaysia. Our own Times newspaper referred to "the Bering Straits" when they reported on a madcap idea by the Russians to build a tunnel across to Alaska. It should be, of course, the Bering Strait.

In fact, the only Straits I can think of is Dire, and that's as good a word as any to describe the general use of the word Strait.

Short story published

Just occasionally I find the time to write something serious. One of my 'serious' efforts, a short story called 'Safe', has been published in an anthology of short stories called In the Shadow of the Red Queen. You can have a look at the book or buy a copy by clicking on the link below. I'll post an excerpt soon, to give you a taster...

I hate the word passionate with a passion

When did it become a prerequisite to use the word passionate in your work? Especially for job interviews? It's easy to picture the scene:

Interviewer: "Why should we hire you for this job vacancy?"

Interviewee: "Because I am passionate about removing illegal dog waste deposits from pedestrian thoroughfares."

Sometimes it also helps to thump your chest while using the word passionate. Not sure why. Have scientific studies shown that the most passionate things on the planet are gorillas? I missed that one.

You won't see an episode of The Apprentice without some horribly earnest young person going on about how passionate they are about something totally mundane. "I'm ahhhbsolutely passionate about marketing!" Really? Jesus, you must be dull. Wouldn't like to meet you in a party.

I'm passionate about one thing - my dislike of the word passionate. It's been used so much that it has been rendered meaningless.

Shopping carts or small trolls?

Supermarkets love getting it wrong. Not content with giving up on the word "fewer", I've now seen a sign which reads: "Please leave your trollies here."

Trollies? Are they small trolls? Or did they really mean trolleys? As in the correct plural of trolley?

Interestingly, there were a load of confused-looking children by the sign I saw. Perhaps they really do mean small trolls.

Araf!

Perhaps the first word of Welsh any visitor to Wales learns is Araf. Nowhere can you drive more than a few hundred yards without the white lettering of Araf floating up at you from the road. Arafs must rival sheep for the most abundant blob of white in the country. Araf, of course, means "slow", and although you might think it's warning you of what to expect should you meet the locals, it's actually asking you to drive more slowly.

I can't vouch for the rest of the UK, but here in Wales - North Wales specifically, and Anglesey even more specifically than that - there's an insidious campaign to s...l...o...w u...s a...l...l d...o...w...n. Arafs are no longer enough. Neither are the more serious Arafwch Nawrs, which usually gang-up with Arafs to leave you in no uncertain terms that you're to take your foot off the gas. Now we have speed camera signs every few hundred yards or so. On entering any 30 mph zone - helpfully denoted by signs that say 30 - you also get a lighty-up sign that tells you you're entering a 30 mph zone. This is just in case the other 30 signs were ambiguous in any way, or you simply respond better to flashing lights. Then there are speed-triggered lighty-up signs that say "slow" (though usually not Araf) if you're doing more than 30 within the 30 mph zone, perhaps because you didn't see the large painted signs, don't respond to lighty-up signs, or think Araf refers to the locals. If you're lucky, there'll be no speed ramps, speed bumps, or speed guns. Then, two hundred yards, three empty holiday homes and a boarded-up chapel later, you leave the 30 zone, safely having not run anyone over.

But if this isn't slow enough, now they're slowing us down on the country roads in-between. For one thing, the 30 mph zones are getting bigger. They take an extra field or two now before they bugger off. Get past those fields and just when you think you can floor it - aghhhhhh! - what's this? 40? Why? Yet worse is to come. Reach the end of the 40 zone - and behold - you're now allowed to drive at the G-force-inducing velocity of 50!

Gone are the days when you could take a leisurely drive in Wales, enjoy the wind in your hair and watch the trees and the sheep and the fields go whizzing by. Now the trees and the sheep and the fields are whizzing by you. You know there is something really wrong with the world when caravans can keep up with the speed limit.

But, alas, this is the case. Cars are getting faster, but roads are getting slower. The world is truly bonkers. And Wales especially.

Outlook: A long, hot summer (if you live in London)

Why do they do it? Why?

The Met Office has only gone and predicted a good summer. Again. The only predictable thing about the British weather are forecasters predicting it wrongly. In the same way that Sian Lloyd always describes the North Sea coast as "eastern fringes", so meteorologists just can't help but blurt out "we're going to have a good summer" every spring, before quietly slipping under an Atlantic warm front when it all goes Michael Fish. Have they never heard of cricket?

Their forecasts are too prescriptive, too, which is not my experience of British weather.

Why do we always have "mist and fog", and never "fog and mist"?

Why have we never had "spots and spits" of rain?

And why is the weather never a "mixture of scattered showers and sunny spells", but always a "mixture of sunny spells and scattered showers"? Not much of a mixture, is it?

If I was a weatherman, I'd spice up that autocue. We'd have fist and mog patches, for starters. Then we'd have conglomerates of ultra violet light and cumulo-nimbus evaporated moisture formations frequently bearing precipitation. Finally, it would piss all over London and the sun would shine elsewhere. For months.

If only I was a weatherman!

Apple's app ads

Apple's latest TV ad (short for advertisement) is for apps (short for applications). Apps are software tools you can download to your new 'i'-branded App (short for Apple) gear - one tool, for example, remembers where you parked your car. Especially useful if you've parked at the Trafford Centre, or you're blonde and you've just parked. App's app ads got me thinking about another word I've seen shortened that just doesn't work.

I subscribe to a writing magazine which uses zine (short for magazine) a lot, much to my disgust. It sounds wrong. Whereas people say 'flu (short for Influenza, and usually written without the apostrophe...but not by me) and ad, have you ever heard anyone say zine instead of magazine? My brother says apps because he's a walking App ad (though I bought his Mac - short for Macintosh - off him, so I'm part of the revolution). If people say it, and it becomes part of everyday language, I think it becomes more acceptable to write it. Zine sounds wrong, it's lazy, and it's regularly used in a writing magazine of all places.

That darned 'flu!

Looks like we're all going to die. Again.

It's not AIDS. It's not SARS. It's not Osama Bin-Lid, nor even feathered-friend 'flu.

No. It's swine 'flu! And it's coming to an over-reacting GP near you!

Let's start with the basics: the name. Swine 'flu. I understand 'flu can be pretty awful, but if you're going to be rude about it, then do it properly. What's wrong with calling it Bastard 'flu? You can really get your teeth into that. "I've got Bastard 'flu!" It just sounds better.

The really scary thing about Bastard 'flu is that, unlike bird 'flu, you don't have to be having sex with a runny-beaked chicken to get it. All you need to do is sit in your GP's waiting room where someone else sneezes. Oh no! Now I've got Bastard 'flu!

The news media love it. Especially TV. The boring, endless credit crunch had knocked the stuffing out of Fiona Bruce's hyperactive eyebrows, but now they're bouncing round with glee again thanks to the spread of Bastard 'flu. Gives reporters a chance to wear surgical masks and look like they have real news to report on. "We've been told to wear this for our own protection," they pronounce earnestly. Yes, and it conveniently hides their mouth as they grin at the preposterous scaremongering they're inflicting on us all.

There are two things you need to do to avoid getting Bastard 'flu: Turn the TV off, and act as normal.

Fewer, less, or under?

The supermarkets have opened a new front in the war on "fewer."

For those of you who live in a cave, or on Facebook, there's a stealth campaign underway to eradicate the word "fewer" from the English language. "Less" is indeed more, since it's used and abused everywhere, often at the expense of unfashionable "fewer". Most famously in supermarkets, with their "10 items or less" checkouts.

In a bid to obfuscate the issue even more, some supermarkets have replaced the word "less" with "under". I'm sorry, but "10 items or under" is even worse than "10 items or less". And it still begs the question, what the hell is wrong with "10 items or fewer"?

According to a learned friend of mine, "fewer" sounds too posh. Yer wot? It doesn't sound posh at all. It's just unfashionable. Like me, apparently.

TV Hell - DFS

Only one good thing could ever come out of the credit crunch: A closing down sale for DFS.

How come these guys seem to have an advertising budget the size of Sir Fred Goodwin's pension? Not a Coronation Street goes by without some leggy, slow-motion blonde hurling herself into a cushion-infested sofa. I end up clenching the arms of my own chair, almost protectively. As if my poor beleaguered sofa feels threatened in some way. In defiance I scream "I don't want that leggy slow-motion blonde near MY furniture!" Actually, now that I come to think of it...

Other than slow-motion blondes, does anyone take their half-price/sale ends Monday promotions seriously? And why do some sofas look like Rubik's snake? Do you sit on it, or twist it and arrange it into a toy dog?

Whaddaya mean you don't remember Rubik's snake?

But you're right. I don't get interior design.

The trouble with fiscal stimulus

I have several problems with the phrase "fiscal stimulus."

The first is that it often spurts all too eagerly from the craggy jaws of Gordon Brown. Is it me, or is his mush looking more and more like a Google Earth view of the Cairngorms? Apart from the annoying habit where he buries his tongue in his lower lip after every sentence, watching him speak is like watching several lumps of dough bouncing round a washing machine.

I reckon one of the reasons why "fiscal stimulus" has been seized upon so keenly by the media is because it sounds nice when you say it. "Fiscal stimulus". There's a pleasing assonance in there, and lots of sibilant s's to slip off the tongue. This doesn't apply if you have a lisp: "fithcal thimuluth" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Also, I think "fiscal stimulus" sounds vaguely sexual, which is my second problem with it. Every time I hear it I think it's describing an act of sexual gratification using a clenched hand. Either I have a warped mind, or my dubious interpretation nevertheless accurately describes what our leaders are doing to the economy.

My next problem with "fiscal stimulus" is that it's one of those phrases that disappear as fast as they appear, always to the convenience of those who coin them in the first place. It's disposable language, invented by spin doctors and clever PR. It'll go the way of "weapons of mass destruction" (which was replaced by "regime change") when the political and media agenda move on. Expect "fiscal stimulus" to disappear as quickly as "credit crunch", to be replaced by phrases along the lines of "improved public spending efficiencies", "adjusted tax thresholds" and "pension recalculations."

After a year-long hiatus...

...The World is Bonkers is back.
And the world is even more bonkers than it was before. I'd change the title of the blog to reflect this, but then my legion of fans wouldn't be able to find it.
I've since finished a postgraduate course in creative writing, so I'm more literary and aloof than ever. I laugh in the face of popular fiction, and want to punch the faces of Richard and Judy. What do they know? Have they done a postgraduate course in creative writing? The only texts they read are the ones viewers send via their mobiles to win a holiday to Butlins. I have news for you, Richard and Judy, the alphabet carries on after the letter C.
With my rediscovered nastiness and aloofosity (it's clever to make up words) I'm ready for a new season of blogging. I have a whole bag of rants ready to come kicking and screaming into cyberspace. It's hard to be angry and not share it, so I share it, here, with you.

Next time: The phrase "fiscal stimulus", and what Gordon Brown can do with it.