I Put A Spell On You

If you want to get through life thinking that the sun shines out of your backside, then here’s a tip. Never have kids.

These little humans grow from thinking you’re the funniest person ever into teenagers who believe that everything that comes out of your mouth is as boring as a pneumatic drill flying through soft cheese. I have just discovered, thanks to my fourteen year old, that I’m more pointless than dust, and that my opinions are like trapped wind – painful, pointless and best kept to myself.

I helped my youngest with her homework last night and was told I was just plain silly because I made her change some wrong spellings. Apparently “ideas and feelings count more than spelling” and I am a real old fuddy duddy pain who knows nothing. Of course it could be true but, at the risk of sounding like a retired schoolteacher, spelling seems to be going down the drain at an alarming rate.

Near where I live is a pub named The Cavern in Raynes Park, and to entice customers they proudly have a sign outside saying “Anyone buying a drink can bring there own food” . I may be a bit sad but, as I drove home today I really had to fight the impulse to stop and deface it by making the spelling correct. Once home I had just about calmed down when I received a Facebook picture from a friend who has a new book coming out soon. She had proudly sent the jacket cover which had an apostrophe missing and the word “unravelling” spelled with only one “L”. It’s endemic.

My local David Lloyd sports club put a flyer through our door last week offering special discount but saying “Free new member package VARYS from club to club”. This is a multi million pound turnover company yet they won’t even pay for a spell check on their computers.

Mind you it pays not to be too snotty. A very nice lady who coaches me in the gym, and who should know a lot about Sigmund Freud as she has a degree in Psychology, apologised the other day to our class for making “a fraudulent slip”. I actually found that quite cute.

But back to my rant! As well as bad spelling, the wrongly placed apostrophe is now everywhere, even on an old pal’s album. Graeme Clark is the bass player with Wet Wet Wet but the sleeve notes of his new, solo, album which is out in March, don’t mention choruses and verses but “chorus’ and verse’s”. And the great guitarist and singer Chris Rea has a new box set out called Santo Spirito Blues, but his newspaper adverts say the set contains “2 DVD’s and 3 CD’s”. Why is this so difficult? If there’s more than one then you just add an S. Why also add an apostrophe?

My favourite spelling mistakes are the ones that change a meaning completely. Back in November the Yorkshire newspaper Local Link carried an advert for a fireworks display with “toffee apples, hot dogs and buggers.” An on line biog posted on the LinkedIn page of one of my contacts tells us he’s looking for work whilst “redecorating my horse” - presumably he can’t paint his house as it is running in the Grand National. Dr Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google in California, gave out business cards detailing he was also “Chariman”, Tesco had a batch of loin chops which didn’t sell as they were labelled “Lion Chops”, and a riverside restaurant on the Thames allows boats to berth for a couple of hours with a notice saying “Two Hour Birthing Limit. All Birthing At Owner’s Risk”.

But, fusspot that I am, I may have found my perfect job for life. An advert in The Guardian newspaper last Monday is seeking to offer training to people who find “errers jump out at yew while reading,” leading to “the wright career working full or part thyme. You can urn up to £24 an hour”. The end result, hopefully, is a job as a proof reader working for a publisher and getting paid to point out spelling mistakes before stuff is published. Now that’s the kind of job I want.

To have a pet hate is one thing, to make money out of it seems like bliss. Wouldn’t it be ironic if my daughter ends up doing this for a living?