mostly david ephgrave

The other day I saw a man wearing a t-shirt with ‘Awesome Dad Since 2007’ written on it. I hope his kids are eight. If they’re older, then he clearly has a brazen attitude to his poor parenting up to that date. What happened in 2007 to bring about a change to his paternal approach? He must have had a road to Damascus moment. Either that, or he just needed a new top. Maybe his children bought the t-shirt to acknowledge his improvement. It could act as a reminder of both how bad things were and how much better they’ve become. While he may still disappoint from time to time, at least his standards aren’t as low as they were at the turn of the century. You should have seen what was written on his t-shirt back then; the adjective wasn’t ‘awesome’, I can tell you. What if he has more than one family? If so, do they each have corresponding shirts? Timing laundry to line up with custody would be a nightmare. Whatever the motive behind the t-shirt may be, I suppose it could hav...

There is no quicker way to weaken a jokey statement than using an exclamation mark! See, I told you. For me, exclamation marks are akin to wearing a novelty tie or t-shirt; seldom justified and the 'joke' wears thin almost as soon as it's started. It's not that they don't have their place (if I was trapped down a mineshaft I'd probably use one) - but that place isn't at the end of an amusing sentence.   Doing this usually suggests you’ve lost faith in your own sense of humour, and have tacked on some rogue punctuation last-minute to hammer the point home ; “Look, Mum. I’M BEING FUNNY ”. You might as well have attached an MP3 of a swanee whistle, or a short GIF of you shrugging at the camera. (I know all my computer terminology.) If Michael McIntyre was a punctuation point he’d be an exclamation mark: a big, fat one in Comic Sans.   Sometimes, if I’m writing a text or an email to someone who doesn’t know me very well, then th...