Here’s what happened today. First, having suffered stiffening joints for a few days, I fell asleep in a draught I just had to look that up. The spread of draft from America is making me doubt my own language.
I then woke up feeling like I was tied in a knot, went upstairs, realised I had left my phone downstairs (which also doubles as my alarm clock) and really didn’t feel like going back downstairs. So I didn’t. I just decided to wake up on time without a clock. After all, I wake up enough these days, how difficult can it be to wake up on time? With it being Saturday I can afford to get up a bit later and be a bit more flexible about time anyway.
It all went well to start with. I woke, as is normal, around 5.00 am. No, I haven’t suddenly developed industrious habits, I just have the bladder of an elderly man. As I generally sleep in two hour stints after my first waking, I was confident about waking on time. This is exactly what I did. At 7.20 my eyes clicked open, I checked my watch and gently creaked out of bed. That was the last thing that went right for some time.
With being stiff, everything seemed to take much longer than usual and it took me ages to get downstairs, which meant I was later than I wanted to be for work, which meant I couldn’t get a decent parking space . . .
Blah, blah, blah . . .
I had a number of interesting phone calls from people who had obviously given their carers the slip and gained access to a telephone. One was from a man who had just been reading a Jeffrey Archer novel. In it one of the plot points is that someone in the Royal Mint strikes some 2p bronze coins in silver. They are supposedly worth many thousands of Pounds and the man (and his wife, who joined the conversation halfway through) wanted to know how they would tell they had one and what did I know about them.
I know nothing about them apart from the fat they don’t exist. There are silver versions made in some years as a marketing exercise. There are a few known examples of 2p coins minted on cupro-nickel blanks where one has been left in the machine after making 10p coins. Some make just over £1,000 and some don’t make that. Ignore the reference to “mule” in the newspaper article, a mule is a coin struck using two dies from different coins. I don’t think we have a specific name for one struck in the wrong metal, we just call them error coins.
He wouldn’t believe me that they don’t exist, His wife chipped in then, saying that she’s seen them on Google. I couldn’t find one when I looked. Meanwhile The Owner is telling me to stop wasting time and put the phone down. It ended with the gentleman telling me that he didn’t think Archer would write something that wasn’t true and me telling him that it was a work of fiction written by a man who was jailed for perjury so I didn’t think it was necessarily reliable. The conversation ended with me suggesting he contact the Royal Mint. He liked that idea.
Header is a picture Julia took while she was in town earlier today. Her life is much more interesting than mine. No, we don’t know why it ws there.
These are trees near the Mencap Garden.
I believe that it may be true in some cases that the Americans have kept the original spellings and it is we that have changed. I don’t know how reliable this belief is though.
I would google it but your story today shows the folly of googling so I wont.
I believe you are correct in this belief. Their date format is also a survival from the original 18th century style.
I think you will be quite happy when you retire from the shop!
I love the Daleks, those motorized salt and pepper shakers from Dr. Who. Where did you of Julia find one roving the streets? 🙂
She went for a walk with a neighbour yesterday morning and they decided to return by taking a bus into town and getting one back home from there. Whilst in the middle of Nottingham they found a display about decorative street lighting and the Dalek was there.
One never knows where those pesky Daleks will show up next!
That’s true, but youcan eascape the earlier ones by going upstairs!:-)
One just has to make sure that extendable toilet plunger arm doesn’t get one first! 🙂
Yes, they belong to the earlier days of special effects. No CGI for Doctor Who. 🙂
We had a robot patrolling a subway station….they retired it asa giant failure after four months
Having seen Robocop I can see many problems ahead as we adopt robotics. On the other hand, having looked the robot up, I’m not so worried. It was stairs that stopped the Daleks more than once, and stairs that will keep these subway robots under control. 🙂
😂
He had definitely given his carers the slip. I thought the American draft was something to be evaded at all costs
Joe Biden and Donald Trump both seem to have shared your view.
My spell check won’t let me spell draft the way you do. Keeps changing it to “daughter.” 😉 I have to admit that I had never heard of spelling draft any other way.
That’s the tyranny of spellcheckers, forcing us all to adopt American ways. 🙂
It is draught in Australia although the unceasing effect of US hegemony and the weak and gutless acceptance by the rest of the English speaking world will that change, but hopefully not before my demise. I don’t know much about coins and another of Julia’s photographs agin takes the prize.
I ws listening to a Radio 4 programme (that’s our slightly more serious channel, without music and brainless presenters but6 with a selection of pretentious prats) about the different English Languages throughout the world. British, Australian, American, Canadian, Indian, Singapore, Philippines – they all have different takes on how it should be spoken and all co-exist peacefully apart from American. That’s the only version that felt a need to change spellings and the only one, via TV and spellcheckers, that seems intent on taking over.