No Lizards Were Involved in the Preparation of Your Meal (a post about annoying signs)
Friday 14th August 2015
You that know I am a grouch, don’t you? Good. Then it won’t come as a surprise to know that annoying signs give me rage. Have you ever actually corrected a public sign, menu or other notice by re-writing it? No? Frankly I don’t believe you, but in that case I will not confide in you either.
I am going to overlook signs with common grammatical errors because this post would be too long. For similar reasons, I am not going to explore your versus you’re (and all other examples of the misplaced or omitted abbreviation apostrophe), too versus to and so on.
In order to retain the tenuous grip I still have on my own reason, I am also going to overlook the infestation of misplaced possessive apostrophes.
For personal reasons, I am not including signs that might indicate a characteristic or view point of the occupant of a car. ‘Powered by Fairy Dust’, for example. This is because I suspect that I may well one day
have a car that really is powered by fairy dust. Or unicorn breath.
Signs that can cause irritation include:
‘Baby on Board’ stickers in cars. This is a wider category, really and includes ‘Show Dogs in Transit’ along with other warnings. At least, I assume they are warnings. What else could their purpose be? Boastfulness I suppose, but I take them mean: ‘Do not crash into my car. I have a baby in the car. Or a dog. And this is not just any old dog. It’s a
Show Dog. Please crash into another car.’ As if, in the absence of the sticker, I would willfully ram them. Perhaps the existence of these stickers is the only thing that has deterred me from this activity. I think it would be much more helpful if cars had stickers with insightful warnings about the driver, such as: ‘I have no anger management boundaries, and if you accidentally touch my car, I may stab you rather than resolve the matter via our insurance companies as is conventional.’
‘Good Food’. Really? In that case I will take my custom elsewhere. Because I was looking for mediocre or even unpleasant food. And anyway, why be so dolefully underwhelming about the food? Is ‘good’ really the highest praise you can give your own menu? If I had to write a notice about
my pub food, I really do not think I would confine myself to ‘good’. I would at least venture into the realms of divine, ambrosial, celestial – which may be why I get so few advertising copy-writing gigs.
Hand-cut (insert word such as chips, or sandwiches). This category of annoyance extends to the sub-genre of hand-shaped. A burger shaped like a hand. Nice. This is supposed to be reassuring I think. No lizards were involved in the preparation of your hand-shaped burger. Your chips were cut by hand, and not by mouth. There is a further level to be explored: hand-finished. Asda, for example, has a range of Extra Special cakes which are all described as hand-finished. When you contemplate the many alternatives, this is probably a relief.
Now we will wander briefly into the food description isle of my Annoying Signs library. I have seen menus where a sauce, served with – perhaps actually
upon – another item, such as a steak, is described as ‘enveloping’ or even ‘en-robing’ the steak. On Rupert’s sweet life, I promise you, this is true. I almost choked on my hand-pressed juice. Though I
was reassured about the juice, as my greatest juice-related fear until then involved concerns about it having been pressed by foot.
More or less any signs that begin: ‘Polite Notice…’ and then go on (and on) to deliver a passive-aggressive rant about bikes being propped against the shop window sill, people sitting on the wall and so on. These signs almost always seem to relate to windows and walls. Odd. I quite fancy making some notices of my own and festooning my gates with them, but none of them would begin with ‘Polite Notice’ because if I ever catch the phantom dog poo culprit who uses our gateway as a doggy lav (the human owner I mean, not the dog who is innocent of course and who needs to come and live with me), I will be very far from polite.
I have full on “baby/show dog/ herd of unicorns on board” rage. So much to get irrationally annoyed about: no one “gets on board” a car, for starters. Not to mention when there clearly isn’t a baby/show dog/ herd of unicorns anywhere near said vehicle, but the driver is displaying the stupid sign anyway! Grrrrr!
Haha! Nicola, we were separated at birth!