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!