Ruby Tuesday - Can of Cola? I should cocoa
Seen in Woman magazine – a fantastic offer at Asda for half-price champagne. The only trouble was it said it was £27.99, now £18. Go to the back of the class please (half of £27.99 would be £13.99 or £14.00 as there are no half pennies).
Ruby’s younger brother brought home his girlfriend for the first time to meet the family over the weekend and Ruby’s dad cooked up a storm in order to make a good impression on said young lady.
But, despite numerous warnings and reminders that the young lady has a lactose allergy, Ruby’s dad still managed to almost poison the girl by adding butter to the mashed potatoes.
An “urgent” request reaches us from a television production company seeking to recruit participants for a show aimed at couples seeking to overcome “everyday sexual and relationship problems”. As you do. On the box.
Anyhow... by way of reassurance, Laura, the assistant producer, says that this will be a classy production. Why, this company has already produced “24 Hours in A&E” and “Seven Dwarves” (16 cameras in a Big Brother-style house follow the off-stage loves and lives of seven vertically-challenged actors as they star in a pantomime of Snow White).
Mmmm... Bafta winning both of them Ruby is quite sure, but we think we’ll pass on this offer this time.
Regular readers will know that, while she always likes to see the Linnets doing well, Ruby isn’t that much of a football fan.
But, while the drama of Lynn’s defeat at Sutton Coldfield dominated the sporting agenda, Ruby couldn’t help being concerned by the plight of a group of Lynn fans who were reported to have ended up in Sutton-in-Ashfield – roughly 50 miles away from Sutton Coldfield – in attempting to attend the game.
While we’re on the subject of travel, Ruby couldn’t believe her eyes at some reckless driving in King’s Lynn at 8.30am the other day.
The lights at the Tennyson Avenue level crossing went to red and a car going past The Walks dutifully pulled up, the driver perhaps frustrated at being delayed on her journey.
But, to the astonishment of all concerned, a car that had been following suddenly pulled out and accelerated over the railway lines just as the barriers were about to drop down. These are the drivers who cause accidents and if they are caught they should be banned. Perhaps our new police and crime commissioner could make it one of his new priorities.
Now, contrary to popular belief, Ruby doesn’t recall ever claiming to be perfect and she can actually take criticism, which is useful to respond to this correspondence from Geraldine Farrow of Flitcham.
“I regularly read your column and note your enthusiasm for correct punctuation, often rather smugly ‘outing’ mistakes made by others.
“However I have noticed over the months several spelling errors made by yourself. Believing nobody’s perfect I just let it go until Tuesday when I could bear it no longer.
“A paragraph in the column beginning, ‘Now not much phases Ruby....’
“PHASES? I suspect you mean” fazes”, which not only has a different spelling but a different meaning too.
To coin a PHRASE not PHASE “People in glass houses etc....”
Quite right and many thanks, Geraldine. Rest assured that Ruby will arrange a suitable forfeit for the oik responsible, probably involving making tea or something to do with Christmas before December (he will hate it.)
A colleague of Ruby’s has recently taken up horse riding and, after months of waiting, she finally got to have a go at jumping at the weekend.
After what felt like hours of practicing the jumping stance, which is effectively a deep squat and left her legs feeling like jelly, Ruby’s friend set the horse on course for the small jump.
The colleague, who does have issues with balance, made it over successfully but almost came a cropper when she decided to give the horse a pat. The only problem was the horse was cantering at the time.
Using a self-service checkout in a well-known supermarket the other day, Ruby’s colleague thought he had bought something very different from what he expected when the words “Cocoa Cola” came up on the screen.
What will they think of next?
A press release reaches us from a West Norfolk school teacher who shall be nameless telling us about an attempt to get in the “Gunnies World Record book”. Or Guinness, perhaps.
Ruby is a young lady who is totes at home with the metric system so no hankering after imperial measures here. What is a chain anyhow? (Kids ask your grandparents.) But a “Measurement Units Style Guide” that was sent to the Lynn News last week had the unwelcome smack of diktat. “Many organisations appear to tolerate or condone bad practice in the writing of measurement units,” says Robin Paice, of the UK Metric Association, in a covering letter. “Unfortunately, mistakes that appear in print tend to be copied by readers and bad practice is thereby disseminated.”
Therefore, millimetre must be rendered mm, centimetre cm, metre m and kilometre km. So far, so uncontroversial (although kilometre could also be just “k”). Forget m2 for square metre. We say sq m and that’s how it will stay.
Likewise our style for celsius is C and will remain so. Who exactly decides what bad practice is? In this paper it is the editor.
So back off Brussels!
We didn’t fool many of you by moving Lucy to the rare environs of the back page last week.
She was spotted by eagle-eyed Mrs J Curtis, of West Lynn, who wins £10. Well done!
Lucy is to be found in the 48-page paper again today. Cut her out and send to Lynn News Lucy, Lynn News, Limes House, Purfleet Street, King’s Lynn, PE30 1HL.
Happy hunting!
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Weather for King's Lynn
Sunday 19 May 2013
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Light rain
Temperature: 10 C to 14 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: North
