A bargain for Jake the Peg

Lost in translation (2)

Oops! Presumably this Japanese outfit (a hairdresser maybe?) decided to use an online service to translate its message into English.

Park hater

This sign was a hoax by Jamie Maslin, author, adventurer and bushcraft survival instructor, who installed it on a bench in a London park in August 2013, shortly before he emigrated to Australia. Roger Bucklesby is a Maslin fictional character — a misanthropic failed author. When an image of the plaque was posted online it went viral within hours. 

Who am I to Dairylea?

Whoever produced this sign has caerphilly adapted the words of the Eurythmics song, Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This).

So where's the nearest phone?

Thank you muchly, ScotRail. But would it not make more sense to display a sign that actually points people towards the nearest phone rather than steering them to a separate information source? 

No thanks!

Don't ask me why, but somehow I am not tempted to sample the latest offering from this branch of Burger King.

Exorcising dogs

I’ve never been fond of dogs, but until I saw this sign I had not realised they could be possessed by demons. My thanks go to Housing Pendle (www.housingpendle.co.uk) for this warning.

Since Housing Pendle bans canine exorcism on its own premises, perhaps it can recommend a suitable place to which dog owners can take their pooches to be purged of their devils. 

Lost in translation

In 2008, when Asda built a new supermarket on Clase Road in the Swansea suburb of Morriston, the city council decided to erect a warning sign to keep large lorries out of Pant-y-Blawd Road, a narrow residential road alongside the new development. 

According to the council website, only one-ninth of the city’s population speaks Welsh. Nevertheless, official road signs throughout Wales have to be bilingual, and so the council’s in-house translation service was asked for a Welsh rendering of “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only”. Back came the prompt reply, “Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithu.”

These words were duly added to the sign, underneath the English words. Unfortunately, the council signwriters were clearly not members of the city’s small Welsh-speaking minority, because what those words actually mean is, “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.” 

After the few local Welsh-speakers had finished laughing, the council replaced the sign with one bearing more appropriate Welsh words. (“Dim mynediad i gerbydau trwm. Safle preswyl yn unig,” if you must know.) 

Serious yet silly

This placard promoting the 3 April 2014 issue of the Plymouth Herald managed to combine the weighty with the wacky.

Bup stop?

I am only aware of "bup" as an abbreviation for "backup". So is this bus stop in Bristol intended for buses travelling in reverse?  

So! Fisticated?

This image was tweeted by @hughlaurie , no less. It must be the sort of restaurant where they sit you on comphy sophas, pipe sopht music and pheed you phried feasant with phennel. And you can phinish your pheast with a decaph cophee. 

Caution: warning sign ahead

This cautionary notice, seen in Peterborough, was apparently there to warn cyclists about an obstruction further ahead — helpful information perhaps for anyone who manages to avoid crashing into the warning sign. 

Boneless bananas

This notice is truly bananas. Of course, there may well be a few lines of small print somewhere pointing out that, although every effort has been made to fillet the bananas, some small bones may remain.  

"Not envious"

OK, so this isn't exactly a sign, since it's just a correction in a Scottish local newspaper (with a lovely name). But it's still silly enough for me to want to share it.  

Was the signwriter under the influence of alchool?

No sht!

So when is my bus due?

A bit of a discrepancy here. If "The advanced GPS technology . . . now tells you when your bus is due", why does the digital display say: "Bus information is not available. Please see the timetable"?

Not very funny

 Spotted by my daughter outside Lanes of London, a "concept" restaurant attached to London’s Marriott Park Lane Hotel. Not very funny really, but you certainly need a sense of humour if you intend to dine at Lanes, "Purveyors of London Fayre", since a meal for two will cost at least £100, including pricy drinks and 12.5% service. 

And what is this concept restaurant's  concept? Street food! If I fancied street food I’d buy and eat real street food in a real street. I wouldn't pay Lanes prices to eat poncy pimped-up versions of street food at a marble table with a starched napkin on my lap, sipping wine from a selection that starts at £28 for a bottle of run-of-the-mill plonk.

Don't sit on the fence

Are you unsure how to cast your vote in the UK's 2014 European Parliament elections? This public spirited sign is clearly there to encourage to you make up your mind.

Not a door?

Or, as René Magritte might have said, “Ceci n’est pas une porte”

Plus ça change

When my wife was a secondary school teacher many years ago she had the unpleasant experience of being threatened by a knife-wielding pupil. 

If this sales promotion — seen in a store in Atherstone, Warwickshire — is anything to go by, teachers still face the same risk. 

Black-only parking

This apparently racist sign can be seen in Calgary, Canada. 

If you are a White permit holder, a First Nations permit holder or an Asian permit holder, you presumably have to find some other place to park between 6am and 5pm on weekdays. 

(For those who don't understand my reference to "First Nations", it is Canada's equivalent of the USA's "Native Americans".)

Thanks for the warning

Sidmouth invaded by triffids

Well maybe not triffids, but almost as dangerous, if the Sidmouth Herald is to be believed.

  

According to this worthy local newspaper, the town has been invaded by feral onions that have reduced tourists to tears. Visitors are lulled into a false sense of security because “the tiny plants resemble a meadow of pretty white wildflowers”. But they are actually illegal immigrants  from the Mediterranean — “Allium triquetrum, part of the same family as onions and garlic” — and “they give off a potent pong which is wafting across Sidmouth forcing disgusted tourists and locals to hold their noses”.

  

“Worse still,” the paper continues, “the smelly interlopers are actually wiping out native species like the bluebells, a distant cousin, that carpet much of the town’s pretty lawns and promenades.”

But not so slippery now

Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, Northumberland, UK

Some people go both ways

These signs (two from the USA and one from Greece) remind me of Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy wonders which road to take, Scarecrow says:“Pardon me, this way is a very nice way . . . . It's pleasant down that way, too . . . . Of course, some people do go both ways.” 

Inconsistent use of apostrophe's

Such sloppy signwriting! After PIE'S, PASTY'S and SANDWICH'S, how did the signwriter manage to omit the apostrophe from CAKE'S? 

I'd rather use tongs

I love fresh baked bread products but, because of hygiene concerns, I have always been wary of selecting loose rolls from self-service displays. This sign seems to confirm my suspicions. 

Nearly new infants for sale

Sadly, I didn't become aware of this local advertisement until late afternoon, by which time it was too late to buy myself a second-hand infant.

Roll on 2028

This temporary road sign appeared in Worcester in May 2013. 

No doubt the road will have a grand reopening ceremony in 2028. I hope I get an invitation.  

NT humour

I love this one, spotted at the National Trust's Killerton House, near Exeter. 

(But it would have been better without that unnecessary (un-necessary?) hyphen in "unattended".)

Something for the weekend

Would you shop at a store that can’t cope with simple arithmetic? 

No, no, Co-op! Adding an extra day to a two-day weekend does not make it a third longer; it actually makes it 50 per cent longer. And even if you include Friday evening (six hours, say) in your weekend, you only increase its length by 44 per cent (four-ninths) when you add another 24 hours. You’d have to include the whole of Friday if you want your weekend to be only a third longer when you add a Bank Holiday Monday.

Wig & what?

When road works closed some Truro streets to traffic in April 2014, the Wig & Pen pub sensibly erected a banner to draw attention to the fact that it was still open. The banner certainly attracted attention, if not for the intended reason.

Colour happily that ever lasts after

"Colour happily that ever lasts after". 

Thanks helpful that statement for, Dulux! 

Even Yoda better couldn't have put it. 

A £20 fate worse than death

Here’s another lovely image of a silly sign that I nicked from someone else’s tweet. It was first posted, I believe, by Twitter-user Ash Warner (@AlsBoy).

Splash!

This photograph, which I shamelessly stole from a tweet by a Bristolian called Roly (@rtbh), shows a sign seen near Plimsoll Bridge in Bristol.  

Every little helps

OK, so I nicked this image from a Twitter post by @theJeremyVine, but it is so good I had to use it. 

Luckily, since I no longer use Tesco for my major weekly supermarket dash, I am unlikely to spend enough to qualify for decapitation by falling tiles. 

I also like the “Every little helps” message. It clearly helps if you only spend a little at a time.

This sign are ungrammatical

London Borough of Barnet, write out 100 times: 'A singular noun such as "supplier" needs a singular verb such as "is".' 

Oh brother!

OK, so it isn't a sign, but I just couldn't ignore it. This is an illustration from an Amazon page advertising a Kindle edition of a translation of a famous Russian novel. The publisher, e-artnow Editions, has managed to insert an apostrophe that is not only uncalled-for but is also the wrong way round. Whatever happened to proofreaders?