Ridiculous use of English for rubbish

This week’s example of mangled English was located by Cliff Boulton of Ashford. Cliff was out in Pluckley when he came across a bag made by refuse firm Biffa stating it was for the collection of “street arisings”. He said: “I wondered ‘who on earth thought up this totally ridiculous use of the Queen’s English?’ “Street Arisings? The bag contains litter, trash, rubbish, garbage, refuse or many other words from my thesaurus. Nowhere does said thesaurus mention ‘Street Arisings.’ “Maybe Biffa had a competition to see who could come up with the most ludicrous way of describing litter.” Let me know if you’ve come across any mangled English.

Spotted written in the grime on a Royal Mail van: “Driver is naked from the waist down.”

Popping into Whsmith to pay a bill at the Post Office upstairs the other day, I happened to glance at the bookstore’s sizeable autobiography section. And what a selection it is – comprising TV personalities, sportsmen and the odd nonentity. There were tomes by Davina Mccall, cricketer Ben Stokes (still only 26), Peter Andre, Tony Robinson, and cyclist Chris Boardman. Mccall’s would no doubt be the most fascinating given that she’s worked on shows like Popstars: The Rivals and Love on a Saturday Night. But as I continued to scan the selection, I was astonished to see that Kerry Dixon’s autobiography was on the shelf. Dixon, for anyone who didn’t obsess about football in the mid-80s, scored 147 goals for Chelsea before finishing his playing career for Basildon United in 1997. He was last in the news in 2015 for punching and kicking a man who called him a “fatso” in a Dunstable pub. Worth a read, then.

Joke of the week comes from the New York comedian Jackie Mason: “My grandfather always said: ‘Don’t watch your money; watch your health.’ So one day while I was watching my health, someone stole my money. It was my grandfather.”