mostly david ephgrave

I saw this in a café menu today and couldn't work out if the last bit meant there would or wouldn’t be onions. Surely if it’s without no onions then it must come with some. A crossed-out onion is a double negative in different clothes. While the line above suggests the café were out of onions (and how hard are they to source?), by taking the onion out of the second line, they’re just creating confusion; so much for clarity. Thank God I don’t eat meat, or I ' d have no idea what my hot dog would have on it; I wonder if they’d still sell cheese dogs if they were out of no cheese ?   Putting food to one side, today was a productive day. This afternoon, I holed myself up in my office so I could get to grips with what new material I have for next weekend’s work-in-progress dates. I decided to concentrate on the slideshow-based stuff today (and no doubt tomorrow too) as that’s the material I’ve tried the least, or in many cases not at all. I think I’m doing we...

Of all the junk mail that’s been pushed through my door, one item stands head and shoulders above the rest: my laminated menu from Pizza Hot. Not Pizza Hut. Pizza Hot . A subtle but important difference. It’s not the substituted vowel that amuses me. It’s the plastic coating. The sense of permanence is unflinching. They obviously don't think you’ll ever throw it out. That's pretty optimistic.   It also shows commitment. Let’s assume the menu was delivered to every house in Hitchin. That’s 33,352 people. Even after divvying them out to approximately three per household, that’s still 11,117 properties. The mathematics may be crude, but my point still stands. That’s not taking into account the neighbouring towns of Stevenage and Letchworth, who also fall into the Pizza Hot catchment. They have an accumulated population of 117,600. That’s a heck of a lot of laminate. They obviously weren't afraid to flash their cash. But...