Help! I don’t speak emoji 

My friend replied to my text with seven sets of animal paw prints, interspersed with pink hearts and rounded off with a cat face.

This was in reply to me telling her it had been nice to see her when she stayed with us in West Cork.

I squinted at these emojis, trying to make out whether I was looking at ‘What a lovely country house you have’ or ‘What a dump! Cats and dogs everywhere, which is obviously your thing, but I won’t be coming again’.

Earlier that day, another friend replied to my message asking how she was with a burst of gold stars, some prayer hands and a smiley face. Was she all right, or had she dropped dead and started texting me from heaven, using the celestial wifi?

More to the point, will we all speak to each other using only emojis one day? I think it is perfectly possible. And maybe it will be a good thing, once grammar and punctuation hit (or even hits) rock bottom. I went to La Bohème at the London Coliseum the other evening and, baffled by their interpretation of it, I looked at the English National Opera’s website afterwards and was horrified to find this, which I reproduce exactly as written: ‘La bohème is a timeless piece of opera which seeks to explore the themes of enlightenment, good versus’ [sic] evil, and friendship…’

Note the making of versus possessive. While lecturing us about enlightenment, which I’m pretty sure Puccini wasn’t bothered about, they show themselves to be utterlyunenlightened by using incorrect grammar. Even the English National Opera, with its English surtitles on a digital board above the stage where the opera is being sung in English, cannot be trusted to get English right.