Mind your language | 17 July 2010

I have never seen the point of quiche, so I noticed with equanimity a hole where the quiche should be on the shelves of my local Sainsbury’s.

I have never seen the point of quiche, so I noticed with equanimity a hole where the quiche should be on the shelves of my local Sainsbury’s. ‘Due to production issues,’ said a sign, ‘availability across quiche has been affected.’

Issues was to be expected, since mass-amnesia has lost the word problems. But the sign represented a new high-point in the rise of across. I suppose here, in the world of quiche, it meant ‘of all kinds’. It would refer not only to ‘Sainsbury’s Wiltshire Ham and Caramelised Onion and Tewksbury Mustard Quiche’ and ‘Sainsbury’s Be Good To Yourself Cherry Tomato and Cheese Quiche’ but also ‘Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Spinach and Goats’ Cheese Flamme’. It’s a pity, because I am not sure what a flamme is. It is not a word familiar to the great lexicographer Émile Littré, though to be sure his comments on quiche are spare: ‘La chose et le mot sont lorrains.’

I have found out since my visit to the supermarket that Sainsbury’s have induced this quiche famine (which even extends to toad in the hole) because ‘a small amount of peanuts have been found in the factory producing these products’. Well, you can’t be too careful with peanuts. I can see the difficulty in expression here too. It might not have been a small number of peanuts, but then it would have been strange to say ‘a small amount of peanut’. Having decided upon ‘amount’, however, the verb should have agreed with the subject (amount, not peanuts). No matter. We trust that Sainsbury’s is better at allergy precautions than grammar.