but they could have said "it's oh so quiet"

This is going to be a bit of a ramble, but bear with me if you've got a couple of minutes to spare.

Last week was rather unusual for me, as I was working on the installation of an exhibition which involved working on site. And that required a daily commute. And that commute took me through the town of Four Marks in Hampshire. Now, I don't want to disparage anyone who actually lives in Four Marks, but it's one of those strange places that appears to exist simply so that it can be somewhere that's on the way to somewhere else. I've driven through it it hundreds of times, but there's absolutely nothing about it which would suggest 'I must stop here and have a look around sometime'. Even the county council would seem to agree with me, because they suggest that if you're looking for something to do there, you move several miles up the road to the next town.

Anyway, I'll come back to Four Marks later.

This is really about the hoardings outside a housing development that caught my eye as I was driving through. Well, they're nothing remarkable, I agree. We see them all around us, all the time. Just part of the fabric of the environment in which we live. But they've obviously had a bit of money spent on them. There's a lot of Illustrator and Photoshop work gone into them (in that strange 'style' that seems to be reserved solely for provincial housing developers and pub chains which serve food for families). And the vinyl they're printed on doesn't come cheap either.

But it was this one that made me wonder. And this post was originally going to be a smart-Alec comment about how never to trust a designer to spell something correctly. Because it's true, designers (including, I must confess, myself) can't spell. It's not deliberate, it's just the way that our brains are wired. You see, we look at shape and pattern and colour - all the things that make something look 'right' visually. What we don't do is to look at how words are constructed. So, if you ever find yourself commissioning a designer, take my advice and always check the spelling before something goes off to the printers.

And then I thought that maybe it's actually to do with the over-reliance on spell checkers. Because if you spell tranquillity with two Ls, your spell checker will not pick it up. But, by the same token, if you spell tranquility with one L, it won't pick that up either. Because, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, both spellings are acceptable. But that wouldn't have been the case ten years ago, because two Ls would have been the correct English spelling, whilst one L would have been the American spelling.

So maybe this is all about English becoming the language of the internet, and how that usage will spread. Because the English that will predominate will be American English, rather than English English. And does that matter? I guess not. We can, after all, pin the blame for it all on Bill Gates. And just accept the fact with good humor.

And finally, back to Four Marks.

At least one of its residents has a sense of humor (or maybe it's a sense of destiny). And I'm sorry I never got a picture of this, but written in the dust on the road sign which tells you that you've arrived at 'Four Marks' someone had added 'OUT OF TEN'.

Comments

[Adrian Hilder]

I live about 200 yards away from the new housing development. Four Marks "out of ten", I remember that! It was written by the daughter of one of the hair dressers who works in town. The daughter went off to London and returned after 2 years because she realised she liked the countryside after all! Four Marks is pretty quiet and you have to drive 15-30 minutes to do most things. In the town itself you really have to get off the A31. It has a station - for the mid hants (steam) railway, there is a small business park with offices, a number of superb country pubs are within a few miles, there is a woodland walk and a golf course. It is a commuter town and here are the real attractions:
more 4-6 bedroom executive homes than any other town within a 20 minute drive.
Inside 1 to 2 hours travel time you can be anywhere in central London or anywhere on the south coast or the New Forest.
It is a shame the town centre on the A31 seems so souless, but the Parish Council are making progress to develop this area to make it more appealing.