Spelling Bee

Firstly, I'm going to be away for a few days without my laptop or any internet connection, so there won't be an update here for a while. Mind you, I'm not all that regular anyway, so I don't suppose any of you will notice.

I was sitting in a pub the other day (people watching, of course) and there was this young girl sitting opposite me. She was wearing large hooped earrings, lip gloss, white-tipped fingernails – you know the sort. She was preoccupied with tapping out a message on her mobile phone and I could see by the look on her face that she was having some difficulty. Suddenly she looked up as the barman emptied her ashtray.

"You know the word greatest?" she said. "Is it ist at the end or est?"

Unfortunately the young barman was Spanish and told her that his spelling of English wasn't that hot (unlike him), but he said it probably doesn't matter.

And that, my friends, is how the written language evolves. You don't have to be the greatist speller on earth to make yourself understood, do you? Try as we might to defend the rules of grammar and spelling, the written language is now victim to the barrage of newspeak that text messaging has launched. Whilst development is inevitable, nevertheless it makes me rather sad. What was the point of toiling away at school for all those years, trying to get it all right, only to learn now - from a Spanish barman - that it "doesn't matter". I blame Anthony Burgess - his A Clockwork Orange started the rot.

Bring back Strunk & White, that's what I say.