Apostrophe?!

Dear all,

Well since my last blog I had a mini-break from gigging for a week before returning with two covers gigs with old chum Simma in Newcastle at the Slug and Lettuce and Nancy’s Bordello which were both a lot of fun, especially the latter. Many thanks to all those who made it so. Then yesterday I watched Liverpool win the Carling Cup (see http://danwalshfootball.blogspot.com for a full blog on the subject) which was a real joy and thanks to all the people who I ended up chatting with in the pub it was a real reminder of how great watching football in a pub can be when d**kheads don’t intervene…

Anyway now I’m in Lincolnshire til Thursday where Will and I are performing in special schools in the area. We had two today and both were a lot of fun apart from an excruciating moment where I mistakenly addressed a girl as a boy in a song and she was upset…still hopefully it was ok. Following our Lincolnshire work it’s off to Hull for the first time to play Folk At The Pave on Thursday night.

Now then, I am a bit of a grammatical snob I must confess. I cringe when people wrongly use an apostrophe (or not) in the word its (or it’s). I know what you’re thinking – bloody grammatical snobs why do they have to correct people’s grammar when they know what they mean why can’t they just get their head out of their posterias. Well, let me tell you something – you’re right. We are a bunch of twits who should just get on with life. I think that’s fairly big of me to own up to that last sentence, so please bear that in mind when I make my next point. I came across a launderette in Horncastle today called Wa’shum and Dry. Now could anyone please tell me what on earth the apostrophe is supposed to represent?! I mean I know I reported in a previous blog about the taxi firm in Leicester whose slogan read ‘Probably The Most Cheapest In Lesta’ but at least there it was just bad grammar. What gets me about the apostrophe in Wa’shum is surely someone has made a quite deliberate effort to use the punctuation mark in question…why exactly?! I mean did I miss something? Is this launderette owned by two people with coincidentally laundry-themed names?