Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
What was Chris trying to tell himself… and does Ted need to be afraid?
This morning, I opened my emails and stared at the message I’d sent myself the night before. It simply said, “Don’t look up, rabbit”.
Regular readers may remember I have a habit of waking in the night, grabbing my mobile phone and sending myself “important” messages… messages that occasionally prove useful, but more often than not are complete gobbledygook.
This definitely fell into the latter category. Was it a warning or a threat?
It sounded as if, in a sleepwalking state, I’d been pointing a water-pistol at my rabbit Ted. But if that really was the case, knowing myself as I do, I’d have taken the opportunity to deliver the sentence in Elmer Fudd style, so my shout would surely have been “Don’t look up, wabbit!” Not rabbit.
So, nope, I was barking up the wrong tree with that – and also with the idea that Ted’s hyper-intelligent – but remember, I was dreaming.
After some time, I suddenly remembered what halfasleep me had been trying to tell me. The confusion lay with the comma – it shouldn’t have been there.
I’d woken in a state of irrational excitement, thinking about My Weekly’s recently published book of my columns named The
Inasleepwalkingstate, hadI pointedawaterpistolatTed?
World’sDaftestRabbit, and wondering if there had ever been a book in the history of the world all about a rabbit.
I immediately went on the internet for information, and got hit with a deluge of results that had me instinctively hiding my phone screen in case my wife woke up.
Hence, my hastily written reminder basically meant, when researching rabbits, “don’t look up rabbit.” Searching for “bunny” doesn’t improve the situation either.
Anyway, I now recall drifting back to sleep answering my original question, “PeterRabbit… BrerRabbit…Miffy… WatershipDown…”
OK, so that note wasn’t going to be of much use on the column front. I skimmed down my emails and found another me-message. “Toilet Dalek!” shouted the subject line. I decided not to open it.
Of course, my night-noteto-self wasn’t the first time a single comma has completely messed up a sentence, and the famous book title Eats, ShootsandLeaves points this out particularly well.
But my favourite ever error, in our local press, was an advert for a video rental shop (you can tell how far back we’re going here) and involves not the misplacing of a comma, but of the entire advert.
If you’re going to accidentally place any business address under a banner headline intended for a builders’ merchants yard stating WEHAVEMOUNDS OFHARDCORE… it would probably be better if it wasn’t for the village video shop!
Out now! Our first ever Fun Tales Collection! The World’sDaftest Rabbit&Other Stories is available exclusively from WWW.DCTHOMSONSHOP. CO.UK for just £7.99.