Illegible demand for legibility
OUR item expressing suspicion that the UK Royal Mail is deliberately smudging the printing on its âwrite the postcode clearlyâ messages (18 February) reminded Howard Greenwood that he once received a piece of homework marked by his physics teacher bearing an unreadable scrawl in the usual red ink.
Howard took his homework book up to the teacher and asked him what his comment said. The teacher looked at the page and exploded, sending Howard back to his desk with grave threats of what would happen if he were to be so impertinent in future.
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Howard was completely bewildered until, after much deciphering, he and his friends worked out that the scrawl said, âYou must write more legiblyâ.
Life at an end for University of Bath?
THE University of Bath, UK, provides an âemail for lifeâ service to alumni, Danny Colyer tells us. It provides a single email address that need never change.
Or it did. Last week Danny received an email informing him of the universityâs new âBathMailâ service. It included the sentence: âWe will be switching off the Email for Life forwarding service on 2 July 2012.â
So the university authorities have apparently decided that life as they know it is now at an end.
WHILE the US continues its war on some drugs, it welcomes others with open arms.
A friend of a friend of Feedback reports that drugs were being readily dispensed in the minibar of the room he stayed in at a New York hotel.
Blister packs of medications such as ibuprofen and the antihistamine diphenhydramine, labelled with phrases like âHelp. I have an aching bodyâ and âHelp. I canât sleepâ, could be accessed by any guest simply by opening the minibar door.
The drugs on offer were all completely legal, of course, so thatâs alright then.
SPAM emails offering you a cut of an implausibly large, probably illegal and certainly fictitious financial transaction are depressingly common. Ola Olsson was a little startled to be addressed thus: âI contacted you by this means due to a financial transaction that involves a deposit of $17.3 in my bank in China. As a senior manager and the account officer of the deceased depositorâŚâ
READER Ian Witham, meanwhile, wonders why he never gets spam in French or German, which he can read, but lots in Chinese and Korean, which he cannot.
We checked our spam archive and discovered a similar preponderance of messages in Korean, Japanese and something in Chinese characters.
With the magic of technology we translated one of these (âFrom the technical personnel to manage the backbone of combat skillsâ); one email in Hebrew (âOne phone call you know if you deserve money from the stateâ) and one in Malay (âChristmas loansâ).
Like Ian, we find relatively little we are able to read in the original language â and most of that is to do with impotence fears. Why? How do we get on these lists?
A NOTICE in Malvern, Worcestershire, declares an âAlcohol Controlled Areaâ. Jim Ainsworth understands that many people are controlled by alcohol some of the time, and some people are controlled by it much of the time, but how can it take charge of a whole area?
A VENDING machine at a gym Sasha Frank attends sells cans of Celsius Sports drink in flavours such as âgreen teaâ and âwild berriesâ. Each can carries the slogan: âBurn up to 100 Calories or more in each canâ.
Sasha, who sends us photos of the cans to illustrate his point, says he has thought about this statement for quite a while but remains thoroughly mystified by it. What do these drinks do, and how do they do it?
âMike Coonâs box of Lyons coffee bags announces: âBest before: Apr 13 1290â. That was the year Edward 1 erected crosses around England in mourning for Queen Eleanor of Castileâ
WHERE did we leave that âthingâ story? Ah, yes, in the piling systemâŚ
Bruce Mitchell sent a lovely cutting from the Island and Mainland News of 11 August 2010, reporting a number of drug raids on Bribie Island, off Australiaâs Queensland coast. âA 57-year-old Bellara woman was charged after she was found in possession of a drug utensil and thing.â
We asked Bruce whether there was any chance that this was related to the Jamaican-inspired usage we have come across in London, in which âanâ tâingâ is equivalent to âet ceteraâ. No, he says: Bribie Island is âa fifties flashback monoculture of People Who Play Bowls,â with the possible exception of the arrested woman.
So, Queensland residents beware: if you are in possession of any thing, hide it well now.
FINALLY, there is a tub of vitamin E cream in John Lightâs bathroom which says: â100 per cent happiness guaranteed.â
John asks: âHow long should I give it before concluding it isnât working?â