The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Oh my word!
A signs,fter my blethers last week about apostrophes in supermarket I’ve been thinking about a noble profession that has all but died out in the years since desktop publishing extended grasping fingers around the world – sign writers.
When I was a younger man I don’t think I ever saw a wrongly-spelled or ill-punctuated sign. Nowadays, it is quite rare to see a perfectly produced sign.
I have a vivid memory of a day more than 50 years ago when I watched a sign writer at work. He was perched on a ladder, painting a sign above the door of a funeral parlour and using what I later learned was a maulstick (about two feet long, with a padded leather ball on one end) to steady his hand. I think this oversized drumstick was what drew my attention. He was a skilled worker. The sign remained in place until BT started adding digits willynilly to phone numbers.
Talk of sign writers reminds me of that old question: “Give me a sentence that has the same word five times in a row yet is grammatically correct?” The answer is, of course, a pub landlord advising a sign writer that on the panel above his front door he wants: “More space between Pig and and and and and whistle.”
Young people today don’t realise the magnitude of the change computers made on working life. They don’t remember when an office wasn’t a zombie army in a silent room, all transfixed by flashing screens.
The digital revolution made a lot of things easier, of course. In times past we used maps instead of satnavs to find our way, and had to take a dictionary from a shelf to look up spellings. And sign writers had to be employed to announce things to the world.
Nowadays, any fool can type in a few words with barely a nod towards proper English usage and hit “print”. And many fools do.
But if it is so much easier today, why are there so many comically constructed signs? I’ve seen a sign that said “Sign’s made here”. I have heard rumours of a gravestone that insists: “Here lies Mary, the best of mother’s”.
What is most puzzling, though, is how employees of shops, caf é s, and businesses can stand to work in a place that sports a sign declaring they sell pizza’s, cake’s, DVD’S, or aggregate’s. Do they really not know the sign is wrong? If they do know, why don’t they do something about it? They should complain to their boss that they feel foolish, tainted by association with such gobbledegookery?
I wouldn’t go into a shop that advertised it sold “pie’s”. If they’ve been slovenly enough to put an apostrophe in the word, what have they put in the pies?
I thesee that March 1 has been designated National Mountain Hare Day. These are our native mountain hares whose coats turn white in wintertime – only tips of their ears stay black – as camouflage against the snow, protecting them from their main predators, eagles and foxes. In spring and summer their coats change to light brown with a bluey tinge – blue hares they are called then – as another camouflage deception, making it difficult to see them against the backdrop of heather moorland.
The low-ground brown hares which were introduced to Britain by the Romans are larger and heavier animals and their coats stay brown all year round. So far as I’m aware the brown hares have not yet been awarded a dedication day.
The mountain hares share the date with St David, patron saint of Wales, whose day the Welsh celebrate by wearing daffodils in their lapels. We had friends who joined our family for a week every Easter for 11 years to holiday at St Drostan’s Lodge, a selfcatering holiday lodge at Tarfside in Glenesk, and the husband’s party trick was to eat daffodils at breakfast.
We all worried what the outcome might be as daffodil bulbs are toxic and can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and other unsavoury side effects if eaten. However, Ian survived unscathed, though we reckoned that any noxious effects of the flowers had been offset by the copious amounts of whisky he had consumed the night before.
The white mountain hares also share their dedication day with the start of meteorological spring which comprises the months of March, April and May. The succeeding seasons follow in three-monthly periods, which is all neat and tidy.
However, an element of confusion enters into any discussion about just which is the first day of spring. If you are an astronomical spring enthusiast it will fall on March 20, the vernal or spring equinox, when the days get longer and brighter.
I relate the start of spring to the behaviour of the wildlife. When mallard and wigeon are pairing up on the ponds Inka and I walk to, and the partridge coveys break up and the birds pair off, I reckon spring has arrived. Mad March hares boxing in the fields aren’t two bucks fighting over a doe but does fighting off the unwanted attention of bucks before the does are ready to mate.
Montrose-born poet Helen Cruickshank greets the arrival of spring when the bumble bees emerge from their winter nests and start feeding on catkin pollen: The wi’
the news, / Pollen o’ the catkins / Yalla on his trews. / The cordial o’ springtime / Wiles him frae his byke / To feast amang the willow-saughs / By the rushin’ syke.
I see straggling chevrons of greylag and pinkfooted geese flying high and north and I wonder if they are heading for the Loch of Strathbeg, near Fraserburgh. They will congregate there and wait for the time when the call to fly back to their summer breeding grounds in Iceland and Greenland and Spitsbergen becomes irresistible. Following immemorial flight lines they travel more than 1,000 miles, returning as often as not to their previous year’s nest – just a scrape in the ground lined with grasses and down where they lay 4-6 eggs.
The sounds of spring are getting persistent. The return of the oystercatchers from overwintering on the coast is a sure sign that spring is not far off. I heard their first kleep, kleep calls about 10 days ago
when I was out last thing with Inka. Really a coastal bird, they have long adapted to coming inland to nest.
The Doyenne has been hearing greater spotted woodpeckers drumming on old trees in the policy woods round the big hoose. We look forward to their visits to the peanut feeders in the garden but they have been absent so far this year. And the goldfinches have deserted the nyger seeds which is strange but I’ve high hopes they’ll return.
I made a careless mistake identifying a species of duck, which I don’t think I do often. A reader sent a picture of a duck with white flanks, dark head and chestnut shoulders and asked if it was a white mallard. Without looking at it properly I fired back that it was a mallard drake in breeding plumage.
If nothing else I should have noticed that the duck in the photo had a scarlet bill, and
a mallard drake’s bill is yellow. It was a shelduck, which is noticeably bigger than a mallard. Must try harder in future.
And as an ecclesiastical afterthought, tomorrow is the first Sunday in March, otherwise Crow Sunday, an important day for crows in Scotland when traditionally they start to build their nests. So if you see a crow flying by with a twig in its beak, you’ll know the crow knows it, too.
Any noxious effects had been offset by whisky consumed night before