Well, so, continuing the apparent collapse of the English language, I was sitting in the waiting area of the GPs surgery the other day, waiting for a nurse to take a blood sample and thus with nothing much else to do, I studied the ticker type display on the wall way over and up there. It periodically gave a beep and then displayed the name of the next patient to be seen and the number of the room they should make for. Other than that, it showed various general ‘information’ messages and it was one of these that ‘triggered’ me.
The message was, ‘Did you know that a chemist can see most things’ and no, there was no punctuation. Wot does that even mean? My first thought was wot a relief it was to know chemists weren’t fumbling about with foggy vision trying to match the hazy writing on a prescription to the blurry writing on all those boxes and packs of meds in their store and thus were able to present the right meds to the right recipient. However, reading it another way, it could also mean chemists dabble in the paranormal and can occasionally see dead people hanging about behind you. Or, in the interests of health and safety, do we need to ask what exactly it is that chemists can’t see? Scary.
Now this surgery is by no means small and houses many doctors, nurses and ancillary staff thus I wondered why one of those super intelligent folk hadn’t had a quiet word with the ticker technician and suggested dropping the ‘see’ in favour of ‘advise on’. Also, but possibly a step too far, how about replacing ‘things’ with ‘ailments’? Another giant leap could be to replace ‘chemist’ with ‘pharmacist’. End the message with a question mark and they’d be cooking by gas! Little things eh?
See how sad you can become when you find yourself sitting somewhere, solo, waiting and waiting with nothing to do.
Quote; Bill Bryson.
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