In a Japanese car park: ‘Please get a punch at window No. 2’. Notice in the bathroom of a cruise liner, UK: ‘To Flush, Push Knob Behind the Seat.’ In a small hotel in Cornwall, UK: ‘Will any guest wishing to take a bath please make arrangements to have one with Mrs Harvey.’ In Shanghai: ‘Please do not dive in hotel swim pond. Bottom of pond very hard, and not far from top of water. Please do not crack skull on bottom of pond. If do so alarm hotel manager at once.’ In Munich: ‘In your room you will find a minibar which is filled with alcoholics.’ From a guidebook to Buenos Aires: ‘Several of the local beaches are very copular in the summer.’ In a cable car cabin, Huangshan, China: ‘Smoking, hubbub, spit are forbidden in cabin.’ At Northampton General Hospital: ‘Family Planning Advice: Use Rear Entrance.’
A lot of the howlers appear on menus. Not everyone will be tempted by ‘Turdey slices’ (Tenerife); ‘Worm pig stomach’ (China); ‘Grilled sideburn of pork’ (Madeira); or ‘Turkish Sweat of the Day’ (Erzerum). But perhaps one might be by ‘Martini and nipples’ in a hotel on Lake Garda.
Those of us Brits who do not want to get our culottes in a twist can turn to Mark Daniel’s French Letters and the English Canon (Timewell Press, £9.99). The blurb about the author tells us that he lives in Exeter and that his books include the racing thrillers Under Orders, Pity the Sinner and The Devil to Pay. Impressive as they are, these credentials would not necessarily qualify somebody to pontificate about the French language, but Daniel’s publishers tell me he spent a gap year in France. He certainly seems to know his stuff and presents it in a relaxed, amusing way. You catch the flavour of it early in the book:
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