Blog break

Gotta take a break from grading papers. I'm almost done!

Since I didn't do anything of blogging interest yesterday (only left the flat to get take-away kebabs for dinner) I thought I'd treat you today to a selection of some of the amusing and sometimes inexplicable signs I've seen throughout the semester.

Here's one from Bishop's Park. I thought it was an interesting thing to remind ladies to do when entering the public loo. (Public loos, by the way, are one of this city's most fabulous advantages—they're clean, well-stocked (with not only paper but soap) and there are lots of them. What a civilized country this is!)


Other informative signs appear in this particular park, such as the welcome warning below:


Some of the signs obviously assume a higher reading level among the population than we have at home. And people do read here, all the time; it's unusual to see someone on the tube without some reading material. It's often the free papers, but they are reading! And more times than you'd think they've also got a regular book, and not just a trashy novel, either, I've seen some pretty hefty literature being consumed on the tube.

Although, to be completely accurate, I think this sign was in the station in Cambridge, where you would expect people to be pretty literate.

And then there are some signs that, even knowing what the words signify, convey little real meaning to the uninitiated, or to traveling Americans:


The one above was taken at Lord's Cricket Ground, and those folks do delight in obscure terminology.

But this one's just a mystery: