BEACHCOMBER

100 YEARS OLD AND STILL FIGHTING FOR APOSTROPHES...

THE Apostropher Royal, Sir D’Anville O’M’Darlin’, supported by the National Greengrocer’s Union (With An Apostrophe If You Please), has penned a furious condemnation of proposed government cuts which they describe as “an unacceptable restraint on our activities” or “activity’s” in the case of the NGU(WAAIUP).

Ever since the days of Elizabeth I, when, by royal statute, greengrocers were given the privilege of using apostrophes “whensoever and wheresoever they wish”, a monthly dispensation of apostrophes has been scattered to stallholders in the market towns of Britain by the Apostropher Royal’s team of Apostrophic Delegates.

Even during the Civil War, the Great Plague and two world wars, the monthly dispensation continued, boosting national morale and ensuring the continuation of a great British tradition. Now, however, the Chancellor has proposed savage cuts in the national punctuational budget and the Apostropher Royal’s department is being severely reduced.

“This is an outrage,” Sir D’Anville says. “The supplies of royal apostrophes are already at a historic low and I cannot see how we can be expected to meet the costs of next month’s Apostrophe Thursday distribution. We can’t reduce the numbers of our Apostrophic Delegates without leaving whole areas of the country affected by an apausterity unprecedented in modern times. There has been nothing like this since the Great Apostrophe Blight of 1778-93.”

The Apostropher’s remarks, however, have been described as “totally unjustified” by his longterm opponent Lady Ampersandra Notwith-Standing, the Ombudswoman for Conjunctions. When asked to comment, she replied with a single word: “Lampreys”.

In reply to a suggestion that she expand on this, she said: “It’s a typical reaction by Sir D’Anville, whose royal post has given him an exaggerated sense of his own importance. In this case, it is all motivated by the size of his honorarium.

“As you know, he receives no official salary for his work, but is rewarded, according to the original Elizabethan statute, with ‘a lamprey at Michaelmas’ every September 29. Lampreys, however, have been in very short supply in Britain for the past couple of centuries and in recent years, his annual piscine emolument has had to be flown in from Canada.

“Insisting on fresh lampreys, and not trusting the Canadians to slaughter them in traditional manner anyway, Sir D’Anville insists on them being flown to the UK in first class aerated tanks made specially for them. He could save a small fortune by being paid in good British jellied eels instead.”

However, Sir D’Anville totally rejects Lady Ampersandra’s remarks which he says are “motivated by professional envy and a lack of a proper historical prospective.”

A statement has been issued by the NGU(WAAIUP) saying that “talk’s have reached an impas’s and apostrophe’s are going out all over Britain.” The debate continues. Or continue’s.