At least two days out of five, someone in the office will leave home-baked goods in the kitchen, and as I don’t sit too far from there, I’m never short of a sweet treat on these days. Most of the stuff is very good and occasionally, someone who has enjoyed these said treats will leave a note saying so.

Yesterday I read this, on a torn piece of paper, by the sink:

thanks for the shortbred it was well tasty!!!! 🙂

The crudity of the penmanship itself belies the fact that the youngest person in the area has been out of school for at least a decade; which is not to say anything about the poor spelling, the lack of capitalisation, the unnecessary exclamation marks, and – a personal bugbear of mine – the complete misuse of the word ‘well’. I find it hard to believe that when people use the word in this context they think it’s right. It certainly sounds wrong when it comes out of their uneducated mouths, but yet they persist.

It’s true, I do sometimes ride my high-horse about language – but I’m not a grammar Nazi… trust me, I let a lot of stuff slide. Although she has never said, I know my mother thinks I’m on some kind of personal crusade to eradicate proponents of poor language from this world, but if I was, she’d be one of the first to be ostracised. Fortuately – amongst her multitude of literary sins – she has never uttered the phrase ‘well good’.

Anyway, rant over. It was just an itch I had to scratch.

Having said all that, I do agree with the sentiment: the shortbread was bloody good.