Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
Chris’s roving correspondent confirms the world makes no sense…
My friend Mia has been off on her world travels again, no doubt attempting – as most of my friends should – to stay at least one ocean away from me.
Regular readers may recall that Mia isn’t massively successful abroad, having once (completely accidentally) attempted to gain employment at a South American brothel. On this trip she instead spent quite a lot of her time collecting trivia for me.
Mia knows, you see, that I’m very fond of translation errors (considering she once referred to a colleague’s braces as suspenders she understands the problem well).
So, over the last few months I’ve received quite a few text and email photos of various wonderful hotel, restaurant and street signs, and I think it only right I share a few of the best ones with you here.
From Vietnam: Please Be Afraid of the Rabbit
Fairly perplexing, as the sign was hanging on a fence in a wild duck sanctuary. Equally perplexing, at the same sanctuary devoted of course to the protection of ducks, hung this sign:
Take nothing but memories; Leave nothing but foot prints; Kill nothing but ducks.
Ducks? Seriously? Surely the last word should have been “time.” How had no one noticed a mistake like that? They were lucky to have any ducks left.
Among others, scattered across the Far East, were this collection of gems:
Guests note, there will be a fire on Monday, but not to worry (oh well, these things happen)
Please enter escalator backwards (how will you know when to get off?)
Drink here if wishing not to die yet (no choice then!)
Please walk in a dangerous way (I do, I always do)
Make room for the psychos (In a car park… we can probably guess what was meant)
There are NO naked men in here (On a restaurant door, and much to Mia’s relief).
Do not throw stones in the toilet (Very wise. They might rebound off the cubicle door. You’d be on the porcelain and out for the count).
Having related all of that, Mia didn’t really need to travel half the world to find bloopers like these. Here, in my home town of Wycombe, there’s a road sign so accidentally doom-laden that I’ve vowed never to live in that road. It reads simply:
H amp den Road… Leading to the Cemetery. Not much hope there, then?
Before I close, I just want to mention something I heard on my local Wycombe radio station last night. The towns of Wycombe and nearby Slough have little love for one another – a low-key rivalry that goes back to the one season in history when both had good football teams at the same time, but nevertheless, the DJ’s comment was perfect.
“I’ve got a text here from a chap saying he was born in Slough, then moved to Norfolk.” With a barely suppressed chuckle the DJ continued, “What? Straight away? Was it like, ‘Move on son, there’s nothing for toddlers here’?”
Chris Pascoe is the author of A Cat Called Birmingham and You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough, and of Your Cat magazine’s column Confessions of a Cat Sitter.
How did no one notice? They were lucky to have any ducks left