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That interesting little photo of the rare Joe Watthey 'with compliments' slip interests me. It actually says 'With the Head-master's compliments'. It is the hyphen that troubles me. Is it a typing mistake, historical affectation or a Miss Riley spelling error which went uncorrected or missed by the redoubtable Rev. Arthur Edward Watthey (deceased).
Probably not an error. In these days the hyphen was still being overused (sorry, over-used). Like
-teenager. Other folk may remember addtional examples. No, what worries me more about that compliments slip is the indecisive use of the apostrophe! Not very grammar school at all!
I agree the misuse of the apostrophe is the most common mistake we see.
In Birkenhead , there is a large sign which says TAXI'S, phone 632-8157.
And along the East Lancs Road (A580) a market gardener purports to sell:-
Lettuce's
Bean's
Potato's
Tomato's
But in my own town of Heswall, a favourite of mine outside an electrical shop said 'BURGULAR ALARMS FITTED'. A new sign has recently replaced it, using the word 'INTRUDER' instead. Maybe they still dont know how to spell Burglar.
You've opened a can of worms here Brian.
Two of my favourites are:
the vegetarian restaurant in Sheffield in the late sixties that had, as an item on its' menu, "aborigine and tomato"
... and the farm near here that decided about 10 years ago to make use of a naturally produced resource and advertised "fresh manure - £1 a bag; do it yourself - 50p".
Do others find such bad spelling annoying?
I get quite cross and often go in to have them corrected.
The old Food Store in Keighley Centre had to stop selling 'Hot Savioures' while the girl in Superdrugs refused to alter her sign "Phamasists lunch times' notice ( she explained that everyone knew what it meant despite the fact that I pointed out that the word was spelled correctly on the wall behind her) The cafe in Shipley no longer sells ' delishous roast tukey dinners'.
A few minor victories but I fear the country swings inexorably towards anarchy, or worse, 'mobilese'.
But, if I remember correctly, the Keighley version of Hallowe'en was pronounced (and probably written) "mischievious night"...who remembers what they got up to on mischievious night???
Ah yes Allan, Mischevious Night was o joy that is sadly now long gone.
There was
- taking the back yard gates off and hanging them on lamp posts [gates can no longer be lifted off and long gone are the days when lamp posts had the little arm for the lamp-lighter to rest his ladder on].
- collecting all the dustbin lids from the street and rolling them down to "t'bottom o't back street" [you had to make sure you did your own bin lid or people could identify the perpetrator].
- a banger in a tin outside someone's back door.
I'm sure there were other tricks that I can't immediately recall, not having made use of them for a year or two.
What about " knock-a -door-run?" where a few of you would tie together the door handles of 3 or 4 doors, and all knock simultaneously and watch with glee as the owners tried to open their door,each pulling against the other.Cheers.
I remember one particularly nasty trick - a couple of us dug up the bowling green in Lund Park, something I'm not proud of now but it seemed hilarious at the time.
Also - we used to tie black cotton onto doorknockers, hide over the road (not much traffic in those days) and pull the cotton to activate the knocker. As soon as the resident went back indoors one pulled the cotton again. It used to take 2 or 3 looks before they'd cotton on (pardon the pun).
If we could find some relatively fresh doggy poo, we'd put it in a paper bag, place it on a doorstep and set light to it, then knock on the door and run away to watch from a distance. The resident would open the door and naturally stamp on the bag to put out the fire - great stuff!!
Another delightful bit of mischief, but not on Mischievous Night, was to lob snowballs down the chimneys (they were coal fires in those days of course).
Could Trevor Pickles please state exactly where he was when the "George Davis is Innocent" mob struck at Headingley when the Ozzis were ripe for plucking?
Yes, Brian - 4th Nov.... and the different names are interesting. We knew it as Mischievous Night [pronounced Miss Cheevus]. Others called it Miss Cheevius and yet othes Miss Cheef. On encountering southerners in my youth I found that they called it Miss Chiff Night and celebrated it on 31st Oct, and not a Halloween in sight 'til I encountered Northern Irelanders.
To return briefly to the "George Davis is Innocent" vandalism (for Trevor's benefit, although I don't know how it found its way into this thread!): it was the occasion when protestors dug a hole overnight in the test match wicket. This was during the course of the traditional Headingley 4th test, England being in reasonable shape to square the series for an Oval "decider".
I can't remember the year (around '77 maybe?) - certainly not '81 when Botham and Willis performed their heroics on the same ground. I do recall that Ian Chappell was Aussie skipper at the time however.
What was George Davis alleged to have done, anyway?
August 1975. Supporters of George Davis dug holes in the pitch at Headingley and also poured oil over one end of the wicket. It was the oil, not the holes, that caused the match to be abandoned - if England had won that, as seemed likely, it would have squared the series, with a decider looming at ?Lords? I think.
Davis had allegedly taken part in an armed payroll robbery, and was serving his sentence at the time. A group of supporters were taking part in several activities, saying that he was a victim of mistaken identity.
Sorry to put this in this thread - just hope the spelling's OK and that the apostrophes are in the correct spot!!
Thanks, Allan.
I had always thought that George Davis was a teacher who had failed to teach punctuation according to the method prescribed in the National Curriculum.
As a rider to all this, and hopefully to put it to bed, a guy called Chappell (Peter) was one of those jailed for the Headingley incident - he got 18 months. Any relative, thinkst??